LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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PLATO AND PAUL: 



OR, 



Philosophy and Christianity. 



AN EXAMINATION 



OF THE 

TWO FUNDAMENTAL FORCES OF COSMIC AND HUMAN 

HISTORY, WITH THEIR CONTENTS, METHODS, 

FUNCTIONS, RELATIONS, AND 

RESULTS COMPARED. 



/ BY 

. 7 J. W. MENDENHALL, PH. D.. D. D., 



n'l* 



Author of "Echoes from Palestine," Etc. 



Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato." — R. W. Emerson. 
Christianity is the philosophy of the people." — Victor Cousin. 
Udvra do/a^dfere* to nalbv Karix^Te." — The Apostle PAUL. 



CINCINNATI: 
CRANSTON & STOWE 

NEW YORK: 
PHILLIPS & HUNT. 

1886. 






9 J S ^v 



3^ 



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copyright by 
Cranston & Stowe, 

1886. 



INTRODUCTION 



PHILOSOPHY is Speculation ; Christianity is Truth. So far forth 
as the subject-matter of the one is related to, or is identical with, 
the subject-matter of the other, the range of the one is equal to the 
range of the other. The realm of speculation is in the philosophic 
sense illimitable because the realm of truth is without bounds. Spec- 
ulation concerns itself with truth, not as knowing it, but as seeking 
it, and as being ready to investigate it when found, or when it is 
assumed that it has been found. Both are engaged with the same 
problems, employing different and sometimes opposite methods in 
the attempt to solve them, but anticipating in their final rehearsal 
a vindication of the same truths, or the same forms of truth. 

Philosophy, self-guided and self-reliant, speculates with enthusias- 
tic purpose on the accepted or assumed verities of Christiauity. 
Without knowledge, or waiving the use of Revelation as a source of 
knowledge, it can do nothing but speculate. It can assume nothing, 
it must prove every thing ; it knows nothing, it must inquire as it 
goes along. It not infrequently happens that, dazed by the magni- 
tude of its tasks, or discouraged by reason of the incompleteness of 
its discoveries, philosophy merely drifts along the routes of inquiry, 
marking the distances traveled by the mile-posts of its successive 
leaders, seemingly unconscious of the fact that the ages have waited 
for a settlement of the highest problems, and that it should promote 
a settlement or abandon its position as guide to truth. It often lags 
in its self-burdened efforts, and sometimes despairs of reaching the 
goal. From this uncertain and paralyzing condition, however, it 
usually recovers, apparently inspired with a conviction of duty it 
can not shake off, and proceeds with patient steps to the development 
of issues closely akin to those that have their life and power in the 
bosom of Christianity. 

In the nature of the case philosophy is under restraint in the 
prosecution of its endeavors, but there is no help for it so long as 
its fundamental idea is in opposition to the idea of Revelation. 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

Dealing with data, whose explanation is impossible without the recog- 
nition of the supernatural as the initial force of all things, it aims to 
establish the all-sufficiency of things themselves, which, however ab- 
surd in appearance, engages its loftiest efforts, and constitutes a con- 
cept of modern philosophic thought. The beginning of speculation 
is a simple interrogation ; its intermediate stage is an anxious and 
complex inquiry, looking to final results; its end is sometimes doubt, 
sometimes knoivledge, sometimes faith, sometimes the theistic notion. 
Whatever the outcome or emergence philosophy is a wanderer in the 
wilderness of thought, piloting itself by its own compass, anxious all 
the while for rescue, but uncertain all the time as to the issue. 

On the other hand, Christianity, designating the supernatural as 
its starting-point, and accepting revelation as the constituent idea of 
religion, descends to the natural realm, with an explanation of its 
phenomena by the laws of the higher realm, thereby reversing the 
method of inquiry adopted by philosophy, and illuminates all truth by 
its self-enkindled light, to the satisfaction of the reason, and the com- 
fort of the doubting and perplexed inquirer. The immediate effect 
of Revelation is knowledge, which philosophy, unaided and rejecting 
the auxiliaries of religion, fails to impart. 

The extent and limitations of metaphysical research are defined, 
not so much by the principles it seeks to maintain, which are iden- 
tical with the ultimate facts of religion, as by the methods of investi- 
gation it \oluntarily and in the end necessarily adopts. Empirical, 
or absolutely logical methods, adequate enough in the pursuit of sci- 
entific facts, are lamentably inadequate to the ascertainment of truth 
in the higher realms of thought ; but other methods are unknown to 
the philosopher, or if known are by the terms of his purpose un- 
available. He undertakes to pronounce the reason of things, or ex- 
plain them by themselves, than which in the lower realm no higher 
pursuit is possible or more profitable ; but as he attempts to reason 
concerning the reason of things he suddenly discovers his instrument de- 
fective and insufficient. The instrument is by no means valueless, 
but it is imperfect, and serves him only in primary investigation. 
Reason is the ratio of truths or things, and the discovery of reason is 
the discovery of the ^hidden ratio of truths, or the exposition of 
truth in its relation to the source of final truth. 1'he discovery of 
reason, bound up in things, or secreted in the highest truth, is the 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

key to the universe, which philosophy is persistently striving to find. 
That its seeking has been in vain it were injudicious to assert; but 
that it has been successful no one acquainted with its history of failure 
will claim. No disparagement of philosophical labor, no ridicule of 
scientific discoveries, no misrepresentations of materialistic thinkers, 
but a justifiable depreciation of philosophical results in the field of 
ultimate inquiry and the evident embarrassments of all classes of 
speculatists in the realm of higher thought, will be exhibited in this 
treatise. The limitations of philosophic inquiries, and the weaknesses 
of philosophic methods for the determination of final, that is, absolute, 
truth, as contrasted with the defensible and transparent methods of 
Christianity and the adequacy of its truths to the accomplishment of 
the divine ideals respecting man and the universe, constitute the pri- 
mary and pregnant thought of this volume. 

In comparing the two methods and the results obtained by their 
use, the radical contents, both of philosophy and Christianity, as sys- 
tems of truth, must not only be submitted, but they must be analyzed 
and tested by the methods themselves, and as thoroughly as the pur- 
poses of the investigation require. A superficial reference to these 
systems would not enable the reader to discover the failure of the 
one or the success of the other, and, what is more important, it would 
not enable him to understand the reason of failure in the one in- 
stance or the reason of success in the other. Hence, a full schedule 
of the systems themselves, both as to what each is in itself, and what 
they contain in common, we have undertaken to furnish, and trust 
the result will be satisfactory to the students of speculative forms. 
Beginning with Brucker, the father of historians of philosophy, 
and wandering among the nations and following the footsteps of the 
thinkers in search of answers to fundamental questions, we have 
sought to ascertain the original ideas of philosophic leaders, and al- 
ways to compare their judgments and indoctrinations with the en- 
grossed revelations of the Sacred Teacher, in the belief that the 
superiority of the latter will be clearly manifest. The extent to 
which this has been done the reader must determine for himself. 

Evidently enfeebled as philosophy is by its necessary and consti- 
tutional methods, it may surprise the reader to be informed that the 
author's aim is in part to establish that Christianity may be amply 
justified by the philosophical method, and that its philosophical basis 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

is as impregnable as the more common historical basis on which it 
supposedly and safely rests. It is altogether probable, therefore, that 
it will be inferred that if the philosophical method is insufficient for 
philosophical purposes, it must also be inadequate in the hands of 
the Christian investigator for his purposes. Such a conclusion must 
not be hastily drawn. Christianity has its Theological argument — an 
argument strong, robust, granitic ; its argument from Experience, the 
more decisive because in form the more philosophical ; its argument 
from History, a running fire burning up the wild guesses of material- 
ism in its path, and illuminating the heavens as it spreads over the 
earth, its latest work the best because the most destructive and the 
most complete. While the Theological, the Experiential, and the 
Historical arguments are involved one in another, and constitute an 
all-sufficient defense of religious truth, the Philosophical Argument for 
Christianity is as important as these, and as unanswerable, because 
Christianity is true philosophy, or the philosophy of truth in a religious 
form ; and, to meet the demands of the present day, this argument 
is emphasized in this volume more than any other, being rendered 
in such form as to make Christianity appear quite as much a philoso- 
phy as a religion, or that the two are inseparable in Christianity. 
On this basis — the scientific complexion of the highest religion — we hold 
that Christianity may successfully assail the naive materialism and 
popular agnosticism of the times. The conflict now raging is not so 
much a conflict between Christianity and another phase of religion, 
as it is a conflict between Christianity and some form of philosophy. 
Even in India and in pagan lands generally a contest of religions is 
rarely witnessed, but a contest of primordial religious truth with a 
current philosophic idea is constantly going on. In appearance the 
contest is exclusively religious, but at bottom it is the striving of 
religious truth with philosophic error. In Christian lands little or 
no attention has been given to the philosophical character of Chris- 
tianity, its defense being largely historical or in form theological ; 
hence, the philosophic thinker, finding his method abjured, has been 
led to conclude against the philosophical value of religion, and has 
pronounced it a superstition. To acquaint him with the primordial 
ideas of religion, vindicating them from the philosophical stand- 
point, and to re-impress the image of truth upon the mind of man, 
the mistakes of materialism, and the insufficiency and frigidity of a 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

godless philosophy, and the deep, pervasive, and unquenchable spirit 
of Christianity, with the authority of its truths, and the sufficiency 
of its revelations, must be fully aud comprehensively shown, and this is 
attempted in the volume here presented. 

In theological treatises a distinction is observed between mathe- 
matical certainty and moral certainty, or evidence of a mathematical 
cast or force and evidence moral in its content and conditional in its 
power of persuasion, and this distinction is applied in the enforce- 
ment of religious truth, not only to the discredit of the Christian 
stand-point, but also to the weakening of the supports of faith 
in such truth. That the distinction itself is correct must be ad- 
mitted, for evidence differs in its degree of certainty, the positive 
and demonstrative being properly styled "mathematical," and the 
probable or conjectural, but undemonstrative, being called " moral." 
Mora^ evidence may be as convincing to the unprejudiced intel- 
lect as the mathematical, and the truth supported by it may be as trans- 
parent as an axiom, but many minds, unaccustomed to the balancing 
of probabilities or the weighing of evidence in other than the scales 
of exact mathematical dimensions, hesitate to receive for truth that 
which the theologian offers, because he urges in its behalf only 
a moral argument, and that in an apologetic form and without data to 
confirm it. It is time to consider if a mistake has not been made in 
advancing Christianity as probably, but not positively, true, in con- 
ceding that its truths are not demonstrations, and can not be demon- 
strated, in granting that its evidences are not mathematical in spirit 
or form, and can not assume a more precise and satisfactory charac- 
ter, and in insisting that it must be received from a moral conviction 
of its verity, and alone on moral grounds of its absolute sufficiency 
and truthfulness. The mistake appears all the greater when it is re- 
membered that the theologian is willing to concede that physical 
science and philosophic truth appeal with mathematical force to hu- 
man judgment, and encircle themselves with evidences indisputable 
and of universal authority. In his view it is enough if Christianity, 
inasmuch as it is a system of moral truth, is urged as a moral cer- 
tainty, and accepted on moral evidence, however uncertain the cer- 
tainty and unsatisfactory the evidence. To be sure, he will not accept 
physical truth on moral grounds, or subscribe to a system of philo- 
sophic thought, because moral arguments alone support it ; he can not 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

be persuaded to accept gravitation, or chemical affinity on moral evi- 
dence; but be accepts monotheism, incarnation, atonement, regen- 
eration, resurrection, and the doctrines of heaven and hell on 
grounds of moral certainty, as if incapable of a mathematical demon- 
stration. The philosopher, seeing the theologian repudiate moral 
evidence as applied to physical facts, and mathematical evidence as 
applied to moral facts, translates the certainties of religion into un- 
certainties, regarding his own stand-point as preferable because posi- 
tive and assuring. 

In this way theology unwittingly surrenders the argument that 
belongs to it, loses its hold upon the intellectual truth-seeker, and in- 
validates nearly all that it has gained in its conflict with error. Verily, 
we are inclined to reverse the order of the argument. Philosophy is the 
uncertain, because only morally certain, if at all certain, system of truth ; 
Christiantity is the mathematically certain form of the highest truth, the 
geometrical proof of eternal ratios. Spinoza ventured to af- 
firm that theological truth can be proved from a mathematical stand- 
point, but this canon was in the interest of pantheism. We subsidize 
the thought in the interest of Christianity, declaring that, as a sys- 
tem of truth, it is susceptible of mathematical demonstration ; that 
is, that its truths may be as authentically and as satisfactorily vindi- 
cated as any truth in geology, chemistry, geometry, astronomy, biology, 
or psychology, and by precisely those methods which science regards 
inalienable and conclusive. The old way was to enforce the Gos- 
pel by the exercise of authority — not the authority of truth, but the 
authority of force. In those days the fagot, the dungeon, the thumb- 
screw, and the sword were fashioned into arguments that seldom ap- 
pealed in vain. Behold, there is a more excellent way, and that is, 
to present Christianity in its wholeness, and as inherently, and, there- 
fore, -philosophically, true. 

The defense of Christianity on the sole ground of its inspiration, 
however justifiable in theology, is not resorted to here, since the doc- 
trine of inspiration itself is undergoing a change of meaning and a 
modification of expression in Christian circles that forbid its employ- 
ment as a philosophical instrument in the support of the highest 
truth. 'Dogmatic Inspiration, or that inspiration which Theology 
maintains, has now all it can do to maintain itself, while Philosoph- 
ical Inspiration, or that inspiration which is inherent in Truth and 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

logically affirms itself, is potent in the strengthening of one's faith in 
such truth. The integrity of truth is not determined by its so-called 
inspiration, for truth is truth, inspired or uninspired. Christianity as 
truth, not as inspired but as philosophical truth, is the object of our 
inquiry. Conceding only a conditional value to the dogmatic doc- 
trine of inspiration, at the same time it must be affirmed that in an 
unquestionable sense Christianity is an inspiration, and by so much as 
it is an inspiration its truth must be larger than that truth whose 
source is natural or uninspired. Inspired truth, however, is not more 
reliable than uninspired — that is, philosophical truth. An algebraic 
equation is as complete and reliable as the doctrine of the Incarnation 
of Jesus Christ, but it is all-important to show that the doctrine of 
the incarnation is as authoritative and self-luminous as the algebraic 
equation. This can not be done on the ground of its alleged inspira- 
tion, because that is a matter of faith, but it can be done on the 
ground of its philosophical inherency and perfection, because such 
perfection is a matter of demonstration. Inspiration itself is philo- 
sophical, quite as philosophical as incarnation, atonement, or any 
other Biblical truth, and so far as it is considered at all in these 
pages, it is considered in its philosophical value and aspects. As a 
theological dogma it has provoked criticism ; as a philosophical doc- 
trine it will stand any test applied to it. Thus Christianity is pre- 
sented rather as the philosophy than the inspiration of truth. 

Plato and Paul are the exponents of the two antagonistic systems 
of thought, and of the two methods of demonstration. Each stands 
first in his relation to his system, the one to philosophy, the other to 
Christianity. From the one we trace the stream of philosophic in- 
quiry through its tortuous course along the ages, developing as 
it goes into cataracts, lakes, and oceans, to its present bubbling 
currents in materialism, evolution, and agnosticism, at last losing 
sight of Plato in the mysterious depths of metaphysical seas, and 
hearing only the tumultuous roar of many waters. Than Plato no 
one better represents the philosophic spirit in man. From the 
other we trace the historic march of truth from the first morning's 
dawn, through the intervening periods of progress and opposition, 
noting its administration in all lands and among all peoples, recount- 
ing its long and patient struggles with ignorant and embittered foes, 
and observing its quaint and unfortunate embarrassments with sin- 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

cere and undisciplined Mends, tarrying often to point out its internal 
deficiencies and external advantages, acknowledging meanwhile its 
evident defeats and positive successes, and finally prefiguring the joy 
with which it surveys the Past and the calmness with which it omnis- 
ciently contemplates the Future. Paul introduces Christianity in its 
completeness, but soon disappears in the richer history of Christian- 
ity itself. 

Holding fast to the conviction that religion will demonstrate its 
superiority to metaphysics, and on grounds occupied by the latter, 
and anticipating the final triumph of Christianity in our growing 
world, both through philosophic and religious methods of activity, 
this volume is sent forth on an independent errand, and as an aid to 
the consummation. 

J. W. MENDENHALL. 

Delaware, Ohio, April 15, 1886. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE. 

PLATO, 15 



CHAPTER II. 
THE CORNER-STONES OF PHILOSOPHY, 70 

CHAPTER III. 
THE PROVINCE OF PHILOSOPHY, 108 

CHAPTER IV. 
NATURE, OR AN EXEGESIS OF MATTER, 128 

CHAPTER V. 

THE DANCE OF THE ATOMS, . . . . . . 143 

CHAPTER VI. 
THE GROUND OF LIFE, 155 

CHAPTER VH. 
MAN, OR ANTHROPOLOGY, .168 

CHAPTER VIH. 
MIND AN INTEGER, 189 

CHAPTER IX. 
THE AREA OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, 210 



12 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER X. 

PAGE. 

THE LAW OF CAUSALITY, OR EFFICIENT CAUSE, 234 

CHAPTER XI. 
THE CONTENT OF FORCE, 247 

CHAPTER XII. 
THE FIRST CAUSE, 255 

CHAPTER XIII. 
THE FINAL CAUSE, 286 

CHAPTER XIV. 
THE BREAK-DOWN OF PHILOSOPHY, 307 

CHAPTER XV. 

THE RELATION OF PHILOSOPHY TO CHRISTIANITY, .... 328 

CHAPTER XVI. 
THE RELIGIOUS CONCEPT, 343 

CHAPTER XVII. 
THE APOSTLE PAUL, 355 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
THE PROVINCE OF CHRISTIANITY, 408 

CHAPTER XIX. 
THE TWO CHRISTIANITIES, 425 

CHAPTER XX. 

PHILOSOPHICAL GERMS IN CHRISTIANITY, 438 



CONTENTS. 13 

CHAPTER XXI. 

PAGE. 

CHRISTIANITY THE KEY TO THE PHENOMENAL WORLD, . 456 

CHAPTER XXII. 
THE THEODICY OF CHRISTIANITY, 478 

CHAPTER XXTTT. 

THE IDEAL SOCIETY, OR THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY 

TO SOCIETY, 493 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE PERFECTION OF MAN THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY, . 519 

CHAPTER XXV. 
THE FRUITS OF CHRISTIANITY, 535 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE NEW IN CHRISTIANITY, 557 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF CHRISTIANITY, 577 

CHAPTER XXVIH. 
THE DYNAMICS OF CHRISTIANITY, 619 

CHAPTER XXIX. 
THE MAGNETISM OF CHRISTIANITY, 636 

CHAPTER XXX. 
THE PSEUDODOX IN CHRISTIANITY, 652 



14 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

PAGE. 

THE DIAGNOSTIC OF CHEISTIANITY, OK EXPERIENCE THE 

PHILOSOPHIC TEST OF RELIGION, 670 

CHAPTER XXXII. 
COMMON GROUNDS OF PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY, . 687 

CHAPTER XXXIH. 
THE PROSPECTUS OF THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANITY, ... 707 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 
CHRISTIANITY A PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS FINALITY, 725 

CHAPTER XXXV. 
PRESENT TASKS OF CHRISTIANITY, 741 



Philosophy and Christianity. 



CHAPTER I. 

PLATO. 



MYTHOLOGY ascribes to Plato a human and divine parentage; 
human, in that Perictione, a lady of culture and relative of 
Solon, was his mother; divine, in that the god Apollo was his father. 
The story of his birth is very like that recorded of the birth of One 
greater than Plato in the first chapter of the Gospel according to 
Matthew. 

Does philosophy begin with an incarnation? Must Plato be re- 
garded as a divine man? Was the greatest philosopher, like the 
greatest religionist, a divine teacher, manifesting a divine idea to the 
world? The background of Christianity is incarnation, inspiration; 
the sole figure is Christ. The background of philosophy — does it 
glow with inspiration ? Does it flash an incarnate figure on our vision ? 
Is the one altogether the product of inspiration, and the other wholly 
the product of human reason? or does the latter share somewhat the 
munificent equipment and impelling force of the former? Is phi- 
losophy an inert, phlegmatic, uninspired mass of crudities, and are 
its representatives equally impassive and impenetrable? 

Is there no inspiration outside of the Bible ? Aristotle asserts that 
God governs all things on earth in proportion to their sympathy with 
the heavenly bodies. Inspiration in its final form is the measure of 
human sympathy with God, or human sympathy with things divine, 
intelligent, beautiful, good, and true, is the measure of the inspiring 
force received. By this rule there is more than one kind of inspira- 
tion, which, differentiating itself in many forms, is actualized in the 
strifes, industries, aspirations, and activities of men, and gives tone 
and direction to human history. The lowest inspiration is physical, 
exhibited in Jael, Samson, and David, as they overcome men or 
beasts ; in Joshua, Cyrus, and Nehemiah, resisting national foes ; in 
the world's armies, battling for human liberty ; and in earth's grim 
toilers, awakening the secret hope of deliverance and victory. The 

(15) 



16 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

pioneer, the sailor, the mechanic, the victim of circumstance, possessed 
at times by a strange spirit, suddenly accomplishes that which is not 
possible in his ordinary sphere, and illustrates endurance, integrity, and 
the power of performance that puts to shame the routine of existence. 
Usually the unexpected achievances in human life are ascribed to 
patriotism, bravery, stoicism, love of fame ; rather are they the result 
of heroic latencies divinely incited to activity. 

In like manner there is an intellectual inspiration, of which 
Wilberforce, Webster, Newton, Franklin, Angelo, Stevenson, and 
Stanley are good examples. Inventions, discoveries, the products of 
genius, literature, oratory, art, and music are instances of the results 
of an intellectual afflatus, not always native to the human mind. 
Intellectual triumphs we are prone to attribute to native genius; 
but God is in the world governing its history, marking out its lines 
of progress, endowing and calling men to loftiest endeavor and highest 
service. Hence, it is true to say, God is in the genius of the world ; 
he is in music, art, poetry, and literature ; he is in every invention, 
every discovery; he is the presiding Spirit, the informing Nouq of 
the universe. 

These inspirations, physical and intellectual, are not the highest, 
because they are not redemptive, and they, therefore, are not re- 
ligious in their content or purpose. Even wicked men are moved 
physically and intellectually, that is, to physical deeds of grandeur 
and intellectual achievements of permanent value, by the divine 
Spirit ; but such inspiration is for temporal ends, and is not religiously 
redemptive. A spiritual inspiration, begetting reformation, repent- 
ance, regeneration, raising up reformers, martyrs, ministers, Chris- 
tians — this is the highest, this is redemptive. Christianity, so far 
forth as it is a revelation of truth, is the product of the spiritual 
inspiration of the writers of the sacred books. 

Conceding inspiration to philosophy, the word must be used in a 
very guarded, or qualified, sense. The inspiration of Socrates, Plato, 
Descartes, and Locke can only be of an intellectual type, of a kind 
like that which attaches to art, music, oratory, invention, and dis- 
covery. God was in Angelo, Beethoven, Irving, and Shakespeare as 
much as in Anaxagoras, Parmenides, and Plato. The fruits of an 
intellectual inspiration are visible in the intellectual realm of life; 
they can be only approximately or relatively spiritual. 

Philosophic truth, it may be said, is in its content similar to re- 
ligious truth; the philosophic purpose also is a religious purpose; 
hence philosophy, unlike art, music, poetry, and invention, is related 
to religion. The inspiration of the one is like that of the inspiration 
of the other ; Plato is on a level with Paul. The relation of philo- 



BIOGRAPHICAL FACTS. 17 

sophic ideas to revealed truths, because similar in contents, may be 
acknowledged without involving the admission of the spiritual inspira- 
tion of both. All truth, scientific, physical, aesthetic, artistic, poetic, 
is related to revealed truth, is to some extent an illustration, or fore- 
shadowing of it, and has back of it the restraining or stimulating h> 
fluence of inspiration. Philosophic truth supposedly sustains only a 
closer relation because it deals specifically with the same problems of 
religion. Seneca, Confucius, Socrates, and Plato stand out more like 
theologians than Angelo, Charlemagne, Palissy, and Bacon, because 
they deal with the truths that had expansion in Moses, Christ, and 
Paul. Handling the same truths, they appear like similar teachers; 
but the point of divergence is in the source and method of teaching. 
Inspiration relates not alone to the nature of truth to be taught, but 
to the method by w T hich the truth is communicated. In general, the 
method of philosophy is rationalistic ; the method of religion is super- 
naturalistic. One is the product of the human mind, the other the 
product of the divine Spirit. Greek philosophy was the rational ad- 
umbration of Christianity, reflecting incarnation, atonement, resurrec- 
tion, eternal judgment, prayer, and the rites of worship. It was a 
reflection, not a revelation ; it was a prototype, not a fulfillment. 

Plato can not be enrolled among the prophets or apostles ; philosophy 
is not revelation, as it is not inspiration. Like some distant towering 
peak, Plato rises from the obscurity of the past, dim by reason of the 
distance, yet evidently visible by reason of his greatness. He is 
more than the figure-head of his age, more than a teacher of phi- 
losophy. He is the representative of the culture of his times, of the 
aristocratic sense of the higher classes, of the best philosophical ele- 
ments possible among a people given to inquiry ; he stands for gov- 
ernment, for social ideas, for ethical education, for religious teaching. 
In him whatever is good in his age reaches high- water mark; educa- 
tion, the governmental idea, the philosophic purpose, ascends to a 
height beyond which, among the Greeks, it never went. In some 
things even our modern life has not superseded Plato. 

The outward history or the biographical facts of Plato may be 
briefly given. Of leaders in religion or philosophy, the biography is 
often obscure or the data incomplete. Like Elijah they come, and 
like him they go, mysterious heralds of Providence, giving little ac- 
count of themselves to history, save as they report truth, unfurl an 
idea, or reveal law. Several biographies of Plato, of which Zenocrates's 
was the best, but which has disappeared, have been written ; but the 
details as given are contradictory, or written evidently in a spirit of 
unfairness or without reference to the truth. As to his birth, it 
is agreed that it occurred about the time of the death of Pericles, 

2 



18 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Giote fixing it at B. C. 427. Athens was then in its glory as respects 
art, architecture, literature, and general culture. Pericles had beau- 
tified it with the products of art, expending his wealth in its orna- 
mentation ; orators, rhetoricians, grammarians, mathematicians, poets, 
dramatists, and philosophers made the city their home or rendezvous ; 
academies, the sites of which are still known, flourished ; the govern, 
ment was aristocratic and tyrannical ; the military spirit was intense, 
and the people were ambitious for all the glory that success in arms 
could give them. To be born then was a privilege ; it brought oppor- 
tunity; it almost conferred honor. Plato's parents were Athenians. 
Born on the island of iEgina, he was reared amid Athenian culture, 
inheriting the polish, improving the advantages, and sharing the lite- 
rary spirit of the city, returning to it in later life more than he had 
received in the fruits of a philosophic spirit and the products of vast 
literary labor. The reports of his genius, of the alighting of bees on 
his lips, his aptitude to learning, his versatile talents, his delight in 
athletic sports, his fondness for music, his love of poetry, his prefer- 
ence for political affairs, and finally, his taste for philosophy, are 
doubtless authentic, showing how broad his intellectual basis, how 
great his possibilities, how high his aspirations, and indicating the 
achievements of his future. First named Aristocles, his parents soon 
substituted Plato, a word signifying " broad," but whether it meant 
broad-browed, or broad-shouldered, or a broad style, the critics have 
not settled. If Plato stood for the broad thinker, the broad observer, 
the broad scholar, the broad man, it will aptly represent the philosopher 
of whom we are now writing, who was indeed the broadest of men in 
the qualities of mind, insight, and love of truth. 

In moral character he was comparatively blameless, for no blem- 
ishes, no vices, are reported against him. This can not be said of the 
Cynics, Sophists, or Stoics of his time. He was of a melancholy dispo- 
sition, perhaps the outgrowth of a pensive habit of mind. Lewes 
charges him with a want of amiability. If he means the coldness of 
greatness, perhaps he is correct ; but if he means that Plato was a 
misanthrope, he does him injustice. Gifted with an aristocratic sense, 
accustomed to refinement, disgusted with political affairs, he retired to 
the academy, where, undisturbed by politics or the multitude, he solaced 
himself with those investigations of truth which place him above his 
times and give him rank among the thinkers of all ages. Of his 
childhood life little is known, save that in its intellectual graspings it 
was prophetic of the life that grew out of it. He is introduced to 
the world at the age of twenty years, when, exhibiting an eagerness 
for knowledge and an investigating spirit, he became the pupil of 
Socrates, an arrangement that proved advantageous to both master 



PLATO'S SOCIAL RELATIONS. 19 

and disciple. Socrates was the conversing philosopher of Athens — a 
thinker on ethical subjects, roaming about, talking and disputing with 
individuals as he might meet them ; a man who never wrote a book 
or a line, but whose method of reasoning, and whose conversations 
embodying his principles, have been transmitted to us by Plato; a 
man who never addressed a public assembly save when on trial for 
his life, but whose auditor was the single individual ; a man who 
never traveled, so given was he to reflection rather than observation. 
Quaint in dress, ugly in face, his nose having been broken when he 
was nine years old, and going about pretending to know nothing, 
but inquiring of every body what he knew, how he knew, and 
testing his answers by the most skillful dialectical analysis, he be- 
came a well-known figure in the literary and social circles of Athens. 
Young men were amused at his appearance and enjoyed his irony, 
while the elders dreaded or respected him, as he had taught them or 
overwhelmed them with his satire. 

Instinctively, young Plato comprehended the motive of Socrates, 
and, inquiring for his method of reasoning, soon discerned its ade- 
quacy, and began himself to apply it to the great questions which 
philosophy superinduced. Socrates bequeathed to Plato more than 
the dialectical spirit; he awakened in him a philosophic conception 
of the universe which, in its developed form, eclipsed the conceptions 
of Socrates. Logical, he became philosophical ; logical in method, 
philosophical in subject. Socrates's dream of the swan was fulfilled 
in Plato. A swan flies from the altar in the academy, alighting on 
Socrates's breast ; then, spreading its wings, it flies toward heaven, 
enticing by its voice gods and men. Plato appearing in his presence, 
Socrates pronounced him the swan of the dream. 

Thus an unbroken and profitable friendship was the result of the 
mutual faith of tutor and pupil, the latter true to the former even 
unto death, and advancing his philosophic teachings by still broader 
inquiries and deeper answers. Plato and Socrates, says Emerson, 
were a "double star," certainly a fine putting of their relations. 
This relationship continued for eight years, when Socrates drank the 
hemlock, and Plato was left alone, ripening into the independent 
philosopher, and standing for truth as if it were all his own. 

Plato never married. Like Adam Smith, Swedenborg, Macaulay, 
Washington Irving, and Humboldt, he lived without knowing any 
thing of the conjugal relation. His appreciation of woman was not 
remarkable; he advocated the "community" idea with earnestness, 
supporting it by exclusive philosophical considerations. This makes 
against him — if not against him, then against his philosophy. He 
was not wanting in genuine patriotism ; he enlisted in the military 



20 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

service of his country in the time of her danger ; in peace he sought 
to serve the state by devotion to public interests. He was a patriot 
as well as philosopher. Political rather than military affairs he pre- 
ferred; and, when the Thirty Tyrants came into power, Plato, 
through the courtesy of one of them, who was his cousin, obtained a 
civil position, which enabled him to study the science of government, 
the necessity of reforms, and the relation of laws to civil progress 
and individual happiness. This fitted him for a philosophic contem- 
plation of government, which found expression afterward in two 
volumes, entitled the Republic and the Laws. Plato was a tyrant 
himself, the result of his surroundings, education, and position. 
Thoroughly opposed to democracy, he welcomed the change to 
tyranny, advocating severe governmental discipline; he also advo- 
cated caste, and secluded himself from the crowd as beneath him. 
Naturally, he became obnoxious to the people, sometimes because he 
was the friend of Socrates, sometimes because of his aristocracy, 
sometimes because of his socialism, sometimes because of his politics. 
During his early years he was in and out of Athens, as public feeling 
was hostile or friendly to him. 

Unlike Socrates, he became a traveler, driven abroad by the hos- 
tilities he himself had invoked ; but it proved to be providential, as 
it broadened him still more, and prepared him, as he was not pre- 
pared when Socrates vanished, for the vindication of the philosophic 
pursuit. He visited Megara, absorbing mathematics and philosophy ; 
he saw Italy, and drafted its sunshine into his meditations ; he jour- 
neyed into Egypt, plucking religious ideas from temples and priests ; 
it is said he visited Palestine, and extended his travels eastward as 
far as Persia, taking knowledge of religion, history, art, science, and 
philosophy. Nearly ten years were given to travel. He returned to 
Athens at forty years of age with mind richly stored, intellectual im- 
pulses quickened, personal hostilities extinct, and with disciples from 
many lands ready to receive instruction. Having studied mathe- 
matics, poetry, music, grammar, logic, religions, and philosophies; 
having been a soldier, a politician, and a civil officer; having been a 
traveler, a reformer, a statesman ; he settles down, thus equipped 
and experienced, into his life-work, founding an academy, and mak- 
ing his name imperishable by the imperishable truths he communicates 
to men. For forty years he teaches in this academy, dying, as some 
assert, at the advanced age of eighty-one years, with pen in hand 
and writing. The academy building was located one mile north of 
the city, on a level spot just beyond a ridge which now separates the 
modern city from the country. Over the doorway was the inscrip- 
tion, " Let none but geometricians enter here." This is the dialectical 



A SYSTEMLESS PHILOSOPHY. 21 

spirit in a mathematical form, and the key to Plato's mind. All 
that remains of the ancient academy are a few marble pillars, which 
our own eyes looked upon a few years since. A modern house oc- 
cupies the grounds, but the family within is without the spirit of 
Plato. Not far away is the famous, well-worn path of the Peripatetics. 
Here Plato builded better than he knew. In the atmosphere of the 
academy let us study its founder, his teachings, and the far-reaching 
effects of what he taught. As an academician must Plato be esti- 
mated ; all else is preliminary, preparatory. 

Plato, the philosopher ! Plato, the coefficient of universal thought ! 
Such he is ; as such he must be contemplated, namely, as an indi- 
vidual philosopher and the representative of all philosophy. As 
Emerson says, "he is the arrival of accuracy and intelligence," 
speaking with that self-command which profound insight inspires. 
He follows his inner light sufficiently to be original. Little is found 
in outside philosophies not found in him ; he is philosophy, as Christ 
is Christianity. 

At the very threshold of this study a question presents itself for 
settlement which Plato himself ought to have disposed of, but he did 
not, leaving to his admirers and the students of his works a per- 
plexing and never-ceasing mystery. The ability, genius, and educa- 
tion of Plato are conceded ; that he founded an academy and taught 
philosophy are accepted as facts ; that his literary labors were im- 
mense is established by the works attributed to him ; but it is not 
yet determined just what Plato believed and taught respecting the 
great problems of philosophy. It is not clear that Plato, while he 
founded a school of philosophy, instituted a system of philosophy, or 
that Platonism definitely means any philosophic truth. This implies 
mysticism in thought, ambiguity in teaching, poetic driftings, imagina- 
tive musings, and unsettled opinions, the value of which is uncertain 
and obscure. Emerson, a competent and an admiring critic, declares 
that Plato is without system, and that no one can define Platonism. 
The same may be said of Aristotle, also. Of modern philosophy this 
certainly is true. It lacks system ; it abounds in contradictions ; it 
is a house divided against itself. This, then, would appear to be the 
beginning of high-toned, reverential philosophy — a systemless system 
of thought ; a miscellany of discussions, without regard to order, con- 
sistency, or harmony. Schleiermacher is not alone in affirming a 
philosophic scheme in Plato, but when he attempts to point it out it 
is more of the German's scheme than the Athenian's. Grote assails 
the idea of scheme ; the majority of students reject the German con^ 
ception of a system in Plato. 

A kindred difficulty arises with every attempt to classify his writ- 



22 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ings, which furnish few traces of a chronological order, or an order 
of thought. Not even Aristophanes was able to arrange the books 
of Plato in a satisfactory manner. Some critics assume that the 
Phcedrus was the earliest written dialogue and the Laws the latest, 
basing the conclusion on internal evidence ; but the maturity or im- 
maturity of thought in these dialogues will not assist in determining 
the historical order of their composition, inasmuch as both exhibit 
the mature and the immature intellect of the philosopher. One 
reader will refer the Laws to an early period in Plato's life ; another 
sees the signs of superannuation in the book. Many German critics 
are of the opinion that Plato wrote all of his books before he estab- 
lished the academy, but this is a wild conjecture, for it leaves him 
nothing to do in the academy but repeat what he had written. At 
times Plato is thoroughly dialectical in method and subject, as in the 
Sophist and Statesman, teaching the art of reasoning or thinking; at 
another ethical subjects, as in the Meno, engross his attention ; at an- 
other cosmogony and physical themes, as in the Timceus, are supreme. 
Hence, it is natural to divide his philosophy into dialectics, ethics, 
and physics. But this is not comprehensive enough, as all readers 
agree. Schleiermacher, insisting upon an inner connection among the 
dialogues, divides them according to their subject-matter into three 
classes : 1. Elementary Dialogues, embracing the Apology, Crito, 
Phsedrus, Parmenides, Protagoras, Ion, Lysis, Hippias Minor, Laches, 
Euthyphron, and Charmides; 2. Progressive Dialogues, embracing 
the Cratylus, Thesetetus, Menon, Gorgias, Sophistes, Politicus, Euthy- 
demus, Philebus, Phsedo, the Symposium, the first Alcibiades, Menex- 
enus, and the Hippias Major ; 3. Constructive Dialogues, embracing the 
Timseus, the Republic, the Critias, the Laws, and the thirteen 
Epistles. 

Henry Davis, a modern translator of Plato, arranges the books 
into three classes, according to their relation to the period the philos- 
opher spent in travel : 1. About thirteen books were written before 
he traveled ; 2. About ten books were written on his return to Athens ; 
3. The others were written in advanced life. 

Thrasyllus simplified the subject by dividing the treatises into two 
classes: 1. Inquisitory; 2. Expository. Some writers style some of 
the books dramatic, others narrative, others mixed ; but Diogenes 
Laertius says this is a theatrical rather than a philosophical division. 
Laertius speaks oi his dialogues as logical, ethical, political, "mid- 
wife description," tentative, and demonstrative. 

From the analysis of Plato's writings, as made by both ancient 
and modern writers, the difficulty of interpreting them as expressive 
of a single thought or of but few ideas, and of building out of them a 



THE DIALOGISTIC STYLE. 23 

philosophic system, becomes apparent. Had he left a system, complete 
in outline or in parts, the historians of philosophy had found it long 
before now. The failure to find the system raises the suspicion that 
he did not intend to suggest any ; but our conjecture must rest upon 
something more than our own failure in investigation. Perhaps an 
explanation of this unfortunate omission of Plato lies along the path 
we are traveling. 

In his seventh Epistle he expresses an aversion to writing as a 
means of communicatiug or preserving philosophy, declaring that 
there never shall be a treatise of Plato ; and in the Phcedrus he explains 
at great length his contempt for the written argument, or what we 
would call a printed book. He says a published argument, like a paint- 
ing, will be criticised without any power to answer back ; it must be sub- 
ject to ridicule and injury without the means of defense or explanation. 
Hence he undoubtedly opposed the publication of his philosophy in 
the sense of committing it to the world. This has given rise to the 
opinion which Tennemann adopts, that his real philosophy was esoteric, 
or confined to the academy, and that it is impossible to conjecture the 
whole of it. If, however, he meant not his philosophy for the public, he 
did mean it for his disciples, one of whom — Aristotle — makes so many 
allusions to the printed works which pass for Plato's that it is impos- 
sible not to believe that they are the products of his academic teach- 
ing. We scarcely believe that Plato's philosophy was esoteric, but if 
it was, he formulated it in his books, which, without doubt, have 
come down to us. He may have held to speculations which do not 
appear in the books. Aristotle admits as much ; but they were not 
fundamental. To the books we must, therefore, look for his philos- 
ophy ; we shall not, perhaps, find a system of philosophy, but philo- 
sophic truth, more or less, accurately expressed, is in them. 

The books, as Plato's readers know, are written in the form of 
dialogues, in which Plato hides himself under the names of the dis- 
putants ; so that it is not always easy to detect his own opinion, or 
whether he expresses any at all or not. The impersonal form of dis- 
course which Plato adopts, besides relieving him of personal responsi- 
bility, accounts for the difficulty of interpreting him. In this imper- 
sonal way Plato is an esoteric philosopher. The chief interlocutor in 
these dialogues is Socrates, who at times appears to be Plato's master, 
and at ether times it is evident that he is an imaginary person, leav- 
ing us in doubt whether Plato is reporting Socrates's opinion or ex- 
pressing his own. Is Plato Socrates's correspondent or an original 
author ? 

If he hides himself in his dialogues, does he hide his teaching? 
Some there are who assert that Plato is dogmatic, but this is incapable 



24 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

of proof, for the affirmations of Plato are in the form of inferences, 
sometimes expressed, but often implied. Borrowing the dialogistic 
style from Socrates, he wrote the thirty-six works attributed to him 
in this form, save the Apology, which is a single discourse. He ques- 
tions the Eleatic stranger, the Athenian poet, or Alcibiades or Theo- 
dorus or Meno ; he reasons by interrogation ; he is an inquirer after 
truth ; he seeks ; he is painfully anxious for knowledge. He assumes 
the duty of a midwife, ready to deliver the new-born thought of the 
pregnant mind; he stands ready to nurse the infant into life and form. 
He enounces little ; he does not demonstrate, like Aristotle ; it is not 
demonstration that Plato wants ; it is discovery. This may be phil- 
osophic, but it is misleading and evasive, showing that the philoso- 
pher, feeling his way, is not certain of the ground under his feet. 
On great problems, therefore, he is often obscure ; mysteries are mys- 
teries still ; doctrines are unexplained ; as in the Euthyphron, he leaves 
holiness undefined, and often he contradicts himself, as his discussion 
of fortitude in the Laches does not harmonize with allusions to it in 
the Bepublic. Either because of incertitude and ambiguity, or be- 
cause of direct espousal of error, both Christians and pagans have 
alternately claimed Plato, and it is confessed that at times it is diffi- 
cult to assign him his true place. 

With obscurities and ambiguities attaching to Plato, Sehwegler 
insists ' ' that the Platonic philosophy is essentially a development ; " 
that viewed in reference to the influence which at different stages 
controlled in its expression, it might be divided into three periods, 
viz. : the Socratic, the Heraclitic-Eleatic, and the Pythagorean ; or 
viewed with reference to its substance, it might be divided into the 
antisophistic-ethic, the dialectic or mediating, and the systematic or 
constructive periods. The development proposed by Schw T egler is 
open to the objection that lies against all suggested schemes ; it is 
artificial, not natural, exhibiting a mixed and not an orderly or pro- 
gressive arrangement. The Socratic element in Plato's philosophy 
belongs to all its periods of development, and the Pythagorean influ- 
ence was felt even before the establishment of the academy. In 
truth, Plato had entered upon the philosophical inheritance, appro- 
priating such teachings from the masters as commended themselves to 
his judgment, and rejecting those inconsistent with his preferences, 
before his return to Athens from his extensive travels in other lands. 
His acquisitions from the philosophers were made prior to the endow- 
ment of the academy. The itinerant period of Plato's life represents his 
accumulation of philosophic material ; the academy represents his use 
of the material or his own personal philosophic development. During 
the forty years of academic teaching, the influence of Socrates, He- 



THE DIALECTICAL METHOD. 25 

raclitus, the Eleatics, and Pythagoras was simultaneously effective, 
and can not be divided into periods. 

Equally unsatisfactory is Schwegler's second classification of the 
contents of Plato's philosophy. In the beginning the dialectic spirit 
is manifest in Plato, and he never parts with it. It permeates his 
ethics, and aids in systematic apprehension of the truth. It occupies 
no subordinate place ; Plato stands as the dialectician, rigidly employ- 
ing the analytic method in the search for tru.th. If there is any de- 
velopment in Plato, it is a dialectical development, which, however, 
is without historical inherence ; it can not be traced ; it is without 
beginning ; it is without stages ; it is without a specific end. 

Others have ventured to suggest that Plato's work was critical and 
not creative ; that he had in view the refutation of error, and not the 
establishment of truth. In such dialogues as the Sophist and the Gor- 
gias it is apparent that the motive of Plato is the annihilation of sophis- 
tical methods, and the extinction of sophistical conclusions, which passed 
for philosophic truths. In these, however, it must be noted that the 
conflict in Plato's mind is the conflict of method rather than the conflict 
of truth and error. The Socratic method is pitched against the Sophistic 
method ; the latter succumbs. The result is the overthrow of method, 
not the establishment of truth. Without doubt such encounters have 
led students to estimate Plato as a critical philosopher, a refuter of 
error ; but the basis of the estimate is insufficient, for he was rather 
a refuter of method. In other dialogues, however, as in the Phcedo, 
he appears as the creative philosopher, establishing the truth, or at 
least pointing to it with the finger of faith. He confutes ignorant 
opinion ; he analyzes scientific notions ; he reaches out after the beau- 
tiful, as in the Phozdrus, and declares for science, as in the Thecetetus. 
Still, one feels, as he reads him, that Plato is a groper, a seeker, a 
devout inquirer, but not altogether a revealer. He is a pathfinder, 
but not a truth-finder. Plato abounds in investigations, thinkings, 
inquirings, but falls short of positive revelation. He stood on the 
threshold of truth, as Eusebius observes, but the temple-door did not 
swing open at his touch. This is the secret of his systemless philos- 
ophy. Affirmations, not interrogations ; results, not inquiries ; truths, 
not refuted errors, constitute the elements of a system. Results, he 
cautiously declared ; his whole system is an interrogation point. 

Not a system-maker, Plato nevertheless was a thinker, an original 
thinker, heralding thoughts or throwing out signs of truths that were 
new to his generation, whose value the retreating centuries have not 
impaired. Borrowing from other philosophers, he went beyond them 
in the use of their own theories, applying logic with a dexterous hand 
to the tearing down of the false and the building of the true, as he 



26 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

understood it. In his theologic conceptions of the universe, in his 
representation of the divine being, in his ethical data, he surpassed 
his contemporaries, and trenched on a true Biblical revelation. In 
some particulars he so harmonizes with the Old Testament, as in allu- 
sions to the deluge, that his familiarity with it must almost be ac- 
cepted ; and yet he never alludes to Moses or the Jewish cosmogony. 
No, Plato was not inspired ; but these high intellectual reachings indicate 
original power, original thought, which gives him the right to be heard. 

Lewes is emphatic in the belief that Plato's philosophy consists 
wholly in its method, not in its results, not in its relation to truth ; 
that he sacrificed all subjects to method ; that method of thinking, or 
the true process of thought, is the only valuable product of Plato's 
labors. This is a too confined interpretation, for, rigidly dialectical as 
is Plato, he had in view more than the establishment of the art of 
reasoning. If not, he is little more than a rhetorician ; but he is a 
theologian, a psychologist, an ethical teacher, a cosmogonist, a scien- 
tist. Surely he sacrificed not all these problems to the art of rheto- 
ric or a style of logic. Method was the instrument, not the end, of 
investigation. Plato was an investigator, not a mere method-maker. 

His method must not be depreciated. Essentially Socratic, he 
improved it, but it was left to Aristotle to perfect it, showing that 
Plato gave more attention to the subjects of investigation than to the 
method of investigation. Socrates initiated a new style of thinking, 
which led to far-reaching results in his day. He was the first to in- 
sist on definitions, and then, as Aristotle reports, he introduced induc- 
tive or analogical reasoning, which gave order to thought. Definition 
and Induction constitute the Socratic system. Plato finding it inad- 
equate added Analysis or Classification, or " Seeing the One in the 
Many." Aristotle added Demonstration, or the Syllogism. Defini- 
tion, Induction, Analysis, and Demonstration constitute a perfect 
method of thinking or reasoning. Evidently Plato's method, an im- 
provement on Socrates, was behind that of Aristotle; it lacked com- 
pleteness. A faulty method of reasoning and an unknown system of 
philosophy we discover in Plato, but this does not compel a with- 
drawal of admiration for his dialectical attempts, or of faith in the 
trend of his philosophy. 

Lewes also depreciates Plato by asserting that he introduced no 
new elements into the philosophy of his age, making him a tinker of 
other men's ideas. Why not call him a compiler, a plagiarist, a his- 
torian, any thing but a philosopher ? Lewes is an extremist, an icon- 
oclast, an antagonist of philosophy, purposing to undermine the whole 
by dethroning Plato. Plato did introduce analysis into the philo- 
sophical method of reasoning ; he did originate the theory of ideas in 



PLATO'S THEOLOGY. 27 

explanation of the creation of the universe ; his theory of being was 
entirely foreign to the conceptions of his day ; his psychology, So- 
cratic in spirit, was a development, a reduction to scientific form, of 
what his master taught ; his theology bears the marks of intellectual 
bravery; and his ethics, bating the self-evident frailties in it, was 
superior to his age. 

These different departments of his philosophy we shall now undertake 
to examine, without reference to any classification proposed by other 
writers. The order we here follow grows out of a careful reading of 
all the works attributed to Plato, the spurious as well as the genuine, 
and the inferences drawn are based on the verified texts of the various 
editions and translations of Plato. 

Pre-eminently attractive in Plato is what properly may be styled 
his theology. He is not a dogmatic theologian, nor a dogmatist in any 
sense; but he discusses theological problems, aiding the theologians, 
and serving his own purpose as well. He is more conservative than 
radical, except in the application of certain principles to certain ends, 
as explanatory of fundamental facts and teachings. In this de- 
partment the dogmatism, if any, is concealed ; it is not offensive. 
Without a thought of becoming a theologian, like Homer he has set 
forth a theology or opinions relative to the formation of the world, the 
existence of God, and the character of man, which, organized into an 
orderly system, would relieve Plato somewhat of the charge of indefi- 
niteness and obscurity. He has something to say on ontology, cos- 
mology, and psychology, which, whether re-said by others or not, is 
worth hearing. The fundamental truth of philosophy, as of the- 
ology, is God. Philosophy searches, religion reveals. Plato posits the 
divine existence as the essential of the universe, differing from those 
who posit the divine existence as essential to philosophy, and proving 
that he was more anxious to find the truth than to establish a method 
of finding it. Not philosophy, but philosophic truth, Plato sought. 
Hence no system, hence adumbrations of truth. 

As to the substance of his teaching, he is a theologian ; as to the 
method of teaching, he is a philosopher. There are two revelations 
of God — the one written, the other unwritten ; the latter only was 
open to the searching gaze of Plato. The written revelation is the 
subject of interpretation ; it contains truths, the explanation of which 
rests with the theologian. Dealing in truths furnished, he is not a 
discoverer of truth ; he is only an interpreter. The unwritten reve- 
lation of God is nature, or the physical universe, from whose forms 
of matter and systems of operating forces flash the suggestions of in- 
finite power and wisdom, the keys to the nature of the absolute God. 
The theologian of nature is more than an interpreter ; he is a discov- 



28 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

erer of truth hidden in the shell of the universe. Nature is a product ; 
the producer must be found. Thus the task of the theologian merges 
into that of the philosopher, and Plato, double-winged, was both the- 
ologian and philosopher. Seems not his task greater than that of 
Paul, who only interpreted revealed truth, and was aided in inter- 
pretation by inspiration? Plato was a Columbus seeking a new con- 
tinent ; Paul stood still and the continent came to him, and then 
he described it. Plato was a seeker, Paul a finder. Influenced, as 
we have seen, by the Eleatics and Pythagoreans, there came an hour 
in his mental journeyings when, saying farewell to his guides, he 
piloted himself into the regions of the unknown, returning with the 
evidences of a new discovery. This was brave, but it was imperative, 
the measure of success attending Plato demonstrating not merely his 
greatness, but the possibility of the human mind evolving the highest 
truth without the aid of inspiration. 

The theology of Plato, in its fragmentary form, scattered through 
his various works, resembles the theology of the Bible. The Bible 
writers were not system-makers ; they were truth-tellers, writing 
without order, and with no thought of unity ; they were unconscious 
of theological harmonies, and never framed a creed. Plato precipitates 
thoughts in the same disorderly, systemless way, trusting to the skill 
of others to classify, formulate, and build them into a system. But 
this carelessness of method is not a sign of inspiration ; it is a sign 
that method is not the chief ambition of Plato. 

However, many of his dialogues are devoted to the elucidation of 
special subjects, as the Second Alcibiades to prayer, the Charmides to 
temperance, the Phcedo to the immortality of the soul, the Euthyphron 
to holiness, the Banquet to love, the Thecetetus to science, the Meno to 
virtue, and the Parmenides to idealities. In the treatment of any 
single subject, he is sure to make observations on other subjects quite 
as valuable as those that pertain to the subject under discussion ; 
hence, every dialogue emits more than a single ray of light. 

The theism of Plato is not always on the surface, but sometimes 
is vague and indefinite, reaching back into or beginning with the 
mysterious conception of being as the ground of all that is or appears. 
Here is the influence of the Eleatics on Plato. He distinguished be- 
tween the being and the non-being, avoiding the mistake of Zeno 
by recognizing the reality of non-being, or the phenomenal world. 
In the Sophist he clearly defines the separation between entity and 
non-entity, asserting that entity is the "one", and that existences are 
to be regarded as powers. This hint modern philosophy has appropri- 
ated in its definition of being as "activity." In the Cratylus Plato af- 
firms that some things have a "certain firm existence of their own,'' 



MONOTHEISTIC TEACHINGS. 29 

attributing to them the distinguishing mark of power, stability, 
eternity. Groping forward, but declaring a little more with each 
step, he enounces the doctrine of "the one" in its fullness, establish- 
ing it with consummate dialectical skill in the Parmenides, a dialogue 
surpassing all others in metaphysical subtlety and intrinsic develop- 
ment of a single idea. Plato is not particular as to "the many," but 
holds to " the one," averring an " essence existing itself by itself," 
and pronouncing it "infinite." Accidents of time do not belong to 
it; it does not participate in "the many," but in being; it is being. 
If being, it always was, it always will be; hence, Plato defines "the 
one" to be that which "was, is, and will be," language like unto 
John's in his praise of the Almighty. "If one is not," says Plato 
summarily, "nothing is." Thus the philosopher, establishing the idea 
of being as separate from non-being, prepares the way for the final 
assertion of God as the centralization of being, or the essence of "the 
one." Being, undefined, vague, infinite, is the foundation-stone upon 
which rises faith in a personal God. Being is not one thing and 
God another; God is being, being is God. 

In, a compromising spirit the philosopher conceded the existence 
of gods, thus ministering to the polytheistic faith of the people, and 
sustaining the old religion. He speaks of the gods and their quarrel- 
some dispositions in the Euthyphron, but more especially in the Laws, 
where he eulogizes them, encouraging festivals in their honor and the 
offering of prayers and sacrifices in the temples. He even attributes to 
them creative powers, and assigns them a share in the government of the 
world. Man is the creation of one of these subordinate gods. Two 
explanations of this mythological corruption of his theism may be 
given: 1. Such mythology was prevalent in his day; he must recog- 
nize it. 2. He may have believed in the gods. The latter supposi- 
tion we reject, for the philosophers were not, as a class, believers in the 
accepted religion, and Plato in the Republic traces faith in the gods " to 
tradition" alone. One of the accusations against Socrates was that he 
denied the gods, and Plato must have shared the opinion of his mas- 
ter, but through fear of popular tumult he spoke reverently of the 
popular faith, always counseling obedience and holiness. 

Out of mythology he quickly arose into the clearer faith of the 
existence of a personal God, the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of 
the universe, affirming it repeatedly, sometimes inquiringly, but 
rarely doubtfully. Monotheism is a Platonic doctrine, asserted dimly 
in the Philebus, where Plato refers to the "really existing," and to 
the science of the Eternal; but openly in the Republic, where God's good- 
ness and God's reality are the subjects of thought ; clearly in the first 
Alcibiades, where the Deity is spoken of as a guide ; discriminatingly 



30 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

in the Theoetetus, where God's attributes are proclaimed ; personally 
in the Minos, where Zeus converses with men ; and positively in the 
Laws, where God is declared as "having the beginning, the end, and 
middle of all things." In addition to these fragmentary proofs of the 
monotheism of Plato, we find a comprehensive theistic conception, 
especially in the Republic, the Timceus, and the Laws, forever reliev- 
ing him of the suspicion of inconsistency and of a wavering faith in 
God. In the Laws he insists that the Deity is "worthy of blessed 
attention," and, resisting the dictum of Protagoras that "man is the 
measure of all things," he enounces that the Deity is the measure of 
all things, a sublime doctrine, elevating and true. To measure the 
universe from the divine standpoint, to measure man from God, not 
God from man, is a very high conception, first promulgated by Plato. 
In the Republic God is represented as good, the author of good, and 
not the author of evil ; his immutability is also fairly taught ; and as 
in the Timceus, here also he declares retribution for the wicked and 
reward for the virtuous, both administered by the justice-loving God. 
Between appearance and reality he draws a definite distinction, re- 
garding the phenomenal world as an appearance and God as the great 
reality. In the Cratylus he avows that Zeus is rightly named, since 
he is the cause of the living. 

Judged by themselves, these Platonic or monotheistic representa- 
tions of God, incomplete as they are, but unaccompanied with tradi- 
tion or superstition, are more satisfactory than the uninspired theologies 
of the East, and justify the theistic hypothesis from the rationalistic 
base. Incomplete, they show the necessity of revelation ; they pre- 
pare the way for revelation ; they help to comprehend revelation. 
St. Augustine said, "Plato made me know the true God." Plato 
declared God ; Christ revealed him. Plato assures us that God exists ; 
Christ showeth us the Father. Plato believes; Christ knows. Phi- 
losophy is faith ; Christianity is truth. 

Closely associated with the monotheistic conception of God is 
Plato's cosmological account of the universe, which, excepting the 
Mosaic revelation of world-building, is superior to any thing ever 
framed by theology or philosophy. His theology and cosmogony are 
inseparable, as they involve each other ; an understanding of one 
requires an understanding of the other. Plato, in the Timoeus, says: 
"Let us declare on what account the framing Artificer settled 
the formation of this universe." He also says: "Let us consider 
respecting it whether it always existed, having no beginning, or 
was generated, beginning from some certain commencement. It is 
generated : for this universe is palpable and has a body." Here is 
the recognition of a difference between the maker and the thing 



DOCTRINE OF CAUSATION AFFIRMED. 31 

made, a discrimination between subject and object, or mind and mat- 
ter; hence Plato is not a pantheist, or an Eleatic. Spinoza did not 
borrow his doctrine of one substance from Plato. There are two sub- 
stances, which a wise philosophy will recognize. Plato's starting-point 
is the difference between, and not the identity of, being and non- 
being. This starting-point, fundamental to a correct theological or 
philosophical representation, both of God and the universe, Plato 
consistently maintains in all his works, as if, whether in doubt re- 
specting other things, he entertained no doubt respecting this truth. 
In the Parmenides he draws the line between the two substances when 
he affirms, "all is said when 'the one' and 'the others' are said." 
"The one," and "the others" — between them there is nothing in 
common. In like manner the Eleatic guest in the Sophist reports ad- 
versely the opinion of the multitude that "nature generates from 
some self-acting fortuitous cause, and without a generating intellect," 
signifying the impossibility of a self-producing universe ; and in the 
Laws he condemns materialism as a "stupid opinion." Plato charac- 
terizes creation in the Banquet as " a thing of extensive meaning," 
but the meaning is not fully interpreted in this dialogue ; we find it 
elsewhere, as in the Philebas, where he discusses the presence of 
mind in nature, " arranging things and governing throughout," and 
in the Thecetetus, where he insists that no one must be allowed to say 
" that any thing exists" or "is produced of itself." Here, as elsewhere, 
the doctrine of causation, or a created universe, he accepts and 
maintains as a first principle, without which a true cosmogony is 
impossible. In the Philebus he defines the "limitless," and "the 
limit," representing God and the universe by these singularly ex- 
pressive words, and insisting that the "limit" is the product of the 
"limitless." 

Plato's idea of the universe was a growth, not a suddenly devel- 
oped conception, as he himself tells in the Phcedo. It seems that, 
attracted by the theory of Anaxagoras, which attributed the cause 
of things to intelligence, he became dissatisfied with it, owing to its 
superficial application of intelligence in the creation of worlds, and 
its explanation or "final cause" of things, and he rejected it; or, 
rather, advanced beyond it. Real, self-operating cause, Plato sought; 
and this, he affirmed, the senses could not grasp or apprehend ; only 
the soul may know the "limitless," the "producing," the "regulat- 
ing " cause. Likewise in the Laivs he insists on searching for the 
cause, as not at all impious but in the direction of intelligence ; and 
in his sixth Epistle he teaches that the "cause" may be "clearly 
known." Most emphatically he shows in the Hippias Major that 
" the produced is one thing, and the producer is another; " while in 



32 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the Phcedrus he teaches that " every thing that is created must neces- 
sarily be created from a beginning," but the beginning force or creator 
is " uncreate ; " that is, the initial moving force, or mover, is without 
beginning, or eternal. 

Summarizing these teachings from Plato, it is easy to see that he 
accepts the difference between being and non-being; that he holds to the 
idea of causality, as afterward expanded by Aristotle into efficient and 
final causes, as the underlying doctrine of cosmology, and implying rad- 
ical discriminations between God and the universe; that he embraces tlie 
thought that there was a time when the universe was not, and it, therefore, 
had a beginning; that he discourages the theory of a self-originating uni- 
verse; and that he declares that the originating mind or cause may 
be known. 

This is an upheaval of ideas, and goes far toward the vindication 
of philosophic inquiry ; whatever is charged against modern philos- 
ophy, Plato can not be charged in his cosmological starting-point 
with puerility, intellectual weakness, or materialistic tendency. 

Gladly granting the above, Plato seems uncertain at a very vital 
point in the unwritten history of creation, which no one since his 
time has adequately settled. The co-eternity of matter is foreshad- 
owed in the discussions in the Thecetetus, and really declared in the 
Timmus; but the co-eternity of the universe he rejects. Matter he 
regards in its original condition as something rude, unformed, law- 
less, roaming aimlessly in space when it is arrested and organized into 
the universe. Given the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, 
God built the worlds, according to the Timmus, using fire and earth 
at first, but adding air and water afterward ; fire made it visible, 
earth gave it solidity, air and water ' ' are indispensable to keep the 
solid bodies in due proportion to one another," and secure unity. He 
is obscure, however, as to the origin of the elements, really does not 
account for them. Prior to the formation of the universe, "three 
distinct things existed, being, place, and generation," or God, space, and 
the generating process, or the idea of world-building. The actual 
generation of the universe was the product of the mutual motion of 
the elements, a mechanical sifting and combination under divine di- 
rection — a sentiment that suggests the dance of the atoms, or the 
modern theory of world-building. Singularly, too, these elements 
were convertible, air into fire, and earth into water, a view suggest- 
ing the modern doctrine of the conservation of forces. Reading this 
from Plato, we can indorse Emerson's eulogy: "Great havoc makes 
he among our originalities." His mathematical conception of the 
universe ; his idea that the proportion of original elements remained 
ever the same ; his thought that ideas and numbers governed in 



AN ORGANIZED UNIVERSE. 33 

world-building, have not been eclipsed by any modern discovery or 
teaching. In cosmology Plato stands at the head. 

We characterize, however, the obscurity or failure to account for 
the elements, and for original matter, as a weakness. What original 
matter was, or how much there was, Plato does not intimate; but, 
avowing this doctrine, he furnishes support to the atomists and ma- 
terialists of our day, who, going farther than he would allow, assert 
the all-sufficient potency of matter for its own organization and de- 
velopment. If original matter were uncreated, the Creator turns out 
to be an organizer merely ; but this is fatal both to theology and a 
divine cosmogony, since original matter may have had the inherent 
tendency to organization, which would displace the reign of a crea- 
tive intellect in the universe. Countenance is given to the doctrine 
of organization, as a substitute for creation, in the Statesman, where 
the Deity is represented as changing "the heavens unto the present 
figure," endowing the heavenly bodies with circular motion; in the 
Laws, where he speaks of a "well-arranged universe;" and in the 
Phcedo, where the philosopher indulges in a lengthy description of the 
earth and its assignment in the heavens. God an organizer! The 
universe an organization ! This is Platonism, yet not essentially in- 
consistent even with the doctrine of causation, or the doctrine of one 
substance, for Plato conceded no power, no life, no originating prin- 
ciple, in unformed matter. 

However, he made almost a redeeming use of the doctrine of the 
co-eternity of matter in that he affirmed that in it was embedded the 
antagonistic principle of evil, now operating in the universe. In 
the Banquet he explains the presence of the two principles, the ra- 
tional and the irrational, which, without doubt, he borrowed from 
the poets and Empedocles, and interprets organization as a triumph 
over the antagonistic principle. Organization was a reduction of an- 
tagonism to order, form, beauty, energy; it was a resurrection from 
death to life, it was the impartation of "good" to matter, which 
appears quite fully in the Cratylus. 

Somewhat contradictory of the doctrine of the co-eternity of mat- 
ter is the Heraclitic doctrine of the " becoming," or the flux of nature, 
which Plato accepted, as may be seen in the discussions in the Cratylus, 
where the universe is spoken of as "marching," and as having in it 
the spirit of going, which is the organ of nature's motions. He fully 
believed in the reality of the phenomenal world, confuting the doc- 
trine of Protagoras in the Thecetetus, that " nothing ever is but always 
becoming." This is the doctrine of Heraclitus, but Plato went not 
so far. Persistently opposed to the idea of permanency in nature, he 
nevertheless held to its reality, which saved him from Eleaticism ; and, 



34 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

distinguishing between the two realities, the finite and the infinite, he 
saved himself from pantheism. The effect of motion on nature he 
discusses as "removal" and "change," the former signifying a going 
from one place to another, and the latter a transformation of quality, 
as sweet into bitter ; the former is the substitute of place, the latter 
the substitute of quality. But he classifies motion producing these 
effects as original and subsidiary ; original motion is self-motion, the 
highest, belonging to soul, to God ; subsidiary motion is derived mo- 
tion, or dependent power. In the Laws he enumerates ten kinds of 
motions, as folloAVs: "1. Ke volution around a center; 2. Locomotion 
from place to place ; 3. Condensation ; 4. Rarefaction ; 5. Increase ; 
6. Decrease ; 7. Generation ; 8. Destruction ; 9. Change produced in 
another by another ; 10. Change produced by a thing itself, both in 
itself and in another." The tenth motion is the motion of the soul; 
it is the motion of God, the power manifest in the universe. Through 
self-existent motion the universe was begotten ; the motion of God 
was communicated to unformed and motionless matter, which, as it 
yielded to the communicating impulse, emerged into systems of worlds, 
such as now occupy the heavens ; and they are as real as he is real. 
Call it "becoming;" it is the reality of becoming. 

The core of Plato's cosmogonal conception, however, has not been 
revealed; it remains for consideration. In his analytic observations 
of nature Plato always proceeded from the inner to the outer ; from 
the subjective to the objective ; from himself to God ; from himself 
to the universe. Mind, thought, idea, constituted the chief corner- 
stone in every superstructure. In some way thought entered into the 
construction of the universe ; God first thought the universe before 
he made it. It existed in God in the intellectual sense before it 
stood forth as a completed physical fact. The idea of the world pre- 
ceded its execution. God is a being of ideas ; the divine mind is 
pregnant with ideas ; it is an idea. Divine ideas are contingent, rela- 
tive, or unchangeable and necessary. Ideas of truth, goodness, 
beauty are eternal, governing divine movements in their loftiest man- 
ifestations. According to preconceived, necessary ideas, which served 
as patterns or rules, God made all things, impregnating unformed 
matter with them, and so giving shape and comeliness to the universe. 
Nature is the receptacle of the divine ideas ; nature is the concreted 
idea ; nature is an idea, the idea of God. The universe is a congre- 
gation of ideas in visible forms ; it is little else than God going out 
of himself and crystallizing in the universe. 

An admirable conception of the universe is this, but marked by 
weaknesses which show the marvelous struggles of the great thinker 
in his search for the truth. One of the objections to this theory of 



SYSTEM OF IDEAS. 35 

ideas is its ambiguity, for it is not certain whether Plato held that 
these ideas were abstract merely, or that they had a separate, indi- 
vidual existence. Were they real existences which the divine mind 
appropriated, and according to which he formed the universe, or were 
they the products of the divine intelligence, native to it as the idea 
of causation is native to the human mind? Cousin, in defending 
Plato, insists that he did not assume for ideas an independent exist- 
ence ; but Aristotle assailed him on the ground that he did maintain 
the independent vitality of the idea, and annihilated the Platonic 
system by clearly showing that while the idea had a subjective, it had 
not an objective, existence. Aristotle ridicules them as " immortalized 
things of sense ;" but in so doing he leaves room for the play of 
" ideas" in the universe. But did even Aristotle assail the Platonic 
idea by the strongest argument ? The argument was effective, but it 
was not comprehensive of the idea itself. Aristotle's idea is correct, 
but he admits the existence of Plato's idea by making it subjective 
instead of objective. Plato located it without, giving it independence ; 
Aristotle located it within, making it dependent on the originating 
mind. In this way only did Aristotle annihilate the Platonic system 
of ideas ; he did not annihilate the ideas. 

The value of the ideas is a separate question ; the system goes, 
the ideas remain. But the ideas are not vital, sovereign existences; 
they remain as abstract patterns and guides. An abstract idea has 
no being, no life, no form. Malebranche says ideas are little beings 
not to be despised, but this can not be allowed ; otherwise the Pla- 
tonic system must be accepted. An idea is as lifeless or beingless as 
a grain of sand. It derives its existence only from the being that 
originates it. Aristotle did not assail the idea itself; but it is assail- 
able on the ground that possibly Plato, in advocating its existence, 
also intended to signify that it had being. He leaves us in doubt as 
to the origin of the ideas, whether they are eternal or derivative ; 
whether they governed God as vitally eternalizing forces or God gov- 
erned them. Plato likewise involves the subject in mystery by the 
manner in which he presents it. In creation he conceives that the 
idea "participated" in matter, as a vital force, as the inspiration of 
matter, instead of the model of material forms. The fact is, Plato's 
ideas are of three kinds : (a) subjective, or the divine idea in the 
mind of God ; (6) objective, or independent ideas, either as ab- 
stract or as having being ; (c) material, i. e. , the participating idea. 
The last introduces a troublesome element in the classification, for 
it is difficult to separate the notion of a participating idea from a 
pantheistic conception of the universe, which Plato himself repudiates. 

The Platonic idea has another signification which involves it in 



36 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

trouble. The philosopher, drawing a distinction between the univer- 
sal and the particular, conceived that the universal is general, invis- 
ible, abstract, and the particular is individual, visible, and concrete, 
and that the particular is modeled after the universal. Pointing to a 
table, he speaks of it as the " particular," back of which is the uni- 
versal, table or general idea of tables. So horse is particular, but 
back of horses there is a universal horse. This distinction is a phil- 
osophical hallucination, for there is no such thing as a universal 
table, or a universal tree, or a universal horse. Such universals do 
not exist ; they do not exist as ideas even. The idea of a table can 
not be universal in any rational sense. It is particular if it exist 
both in the divine mind and in its actual form. This is the weakness 
of rationalism, that it abstracts the particular reason of the human 
mind, converting it into an independent reality, segregated from all 
mind, human and divine, and making it the universal reason. There 
is no such reason. This is the weakness of Schopenhauer's idealistic 
notion oi^God, that he is impersonal, universal will. There is no 
such will. Will, reason, thought, idea can not be impersonal, uni- 
versal, abstract ; they all imply personality or mind. Plato's idea 
points to mind ; Plato himself delivered it from all relation, and 
endowed it with independence, which is absurdity. 

These are some of the weaknesses of the Platonic system of ideas, 
but the great Platonic idea that God built the universe according to 
a preconceived pattern- is not only beautiful, but also imperishable; 
theology can not improve it, philosophy should be content with it. 
This is Platonic idealism. 

From his cosmogony we pass to the consideration of Plato's psy- 
chology, a department of study abounding in discoveries, teachings, 
and suppositions as wonderful and instructive as any to be found in 
the philosopher's writings. At the same time he equally abounds in 
errors, fragments of thought, and great misconceptions in the treat- 
ment of some of the psychological problems which he investigated and 
discussed. His psychology, as a whole, marks the rising and falling 
of intellectual apprehension, the fluctuation of the dialectical force 
of Plato. 

Beginning with the question, What is man ? Plato answers it with 
extreme caution, considering his physical origin first, and his spir- 
itual character and intellectual framework afterward. Usually free 
from the mythological spirit, he rehearses the tales of the ancients re- 
specting an early race of gods and heroes on the earth, from which 
descended the human race to which we belong. The early race, 
according to the Statesman, was ''earth-born, and not begotten from 
each other ;" the people lived a spontaneous life, guarded by the 



IMAGINATIVE PHYSIOLOGY. 37 

Deity, nature offering to them her fruits without toil, and a spirit 
of sedition was absent from them. It was a golden period, not des- 
tined to continue, for revolution is the order of progress on the earth. 
The generations died ; nature itself became cold and unproductive, 
and an uninhabited planet was the result. In due time the Deity is 
moved to re-people the abandoned world, which is easily done by res- 
urrections, transmigrations, or creations ; and after many revolutions 
of this kind, man as we know him appeared, the lord of creation. 
These old tales Plato abandons in the Banquet for another, which 
recites that at one time there were three kinds of human beings on 
the earth — man, woman, and a man-woman, a being partaking of the 
character of both. At length Jupiter devised a plan for the forma- 
tion of a race which should consist of two sexes, the third disappear- 
ing. The surgical process by which this was accomplished Plato 
relates in its disgusting details, showing at once the need of a true 
account of man's creation. In the Philebus reference is made to the 
superiority of the ancestors of the present race, a fiction in which the 
Greek mind was wont to indulge. 

Respecting the present man, Plato, in the Protagoras, recalls the 
fable of his creation by the gods, who fashioned the race within the 
earth, " composing them of earth and fire," and "commanded Prome- 
theus and Epimetheus to adorn them, and to distribute to each such 
faculties as were proper for them ;" Prometheus, stealing " the artifi- 
cial wisdom of Vulcan and Minerva," confers it upon the mortal race, 
and man is thus equipped for an earth-life. 

Fables in Plato : is it any wonder that, as in the Phcedrus, he 
should inquire whether man is a beast, " with more folds and more 
furious than Typhon," or " a more mild and simple animal, naturally 
partaking of a certain divine and modest condition ?" An expounder 
of the degeneracy of the races, a believer in the greatness of ances- 
tors, he yet affirms a god-like origin of the present man. But gods, 
not God, created him. 

As to the physical body of man, Plato writes elaborately, showing, 
however, little knowledge of its construction, or the uses of its prom- 
inent organs. He is not much of a physiologist. He discourses on 
pathology, describes fevers, and their antidote, and even reveals the 
fact of the circulation of the blood ; but, after reading the Timazus, 
the physician will prefer modern medical science to its suggestions. 
Of the liver Plato knows nothing more than that it is the seat of the 
mortal part of the soul ! The bile is a " vicious secretion." Of the 
difference between veins and arteries, of the relation of the lungs and 
viscera, he has no true conception, and of the formation of bones and 
flesh he is only approximately satisfactory. 



38 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Of the soul, which is " glued" to the body, he is specific ; specific 
as to its origin, its character, its possibilities, its immortality, its des- 
tiny; he is a theologian, a psychologist, a great teacher. The duty 
of self-knowledge he emphasizes and explains in the Charmides, and 
in other dialogues he insists on the study of the soul as the only con- 
dition of progress from depravity to purity, and as a preparation for 
the highest immortality. 

The first or initial doctrine in Plato's psychology is the pre-eodstence 
of the soul, supported and enforced by reasonings the most plausible, 
and by arguments singularly effective and difficult to overthrow in the 
absence of Scripture truth, which some, however, have affirmed does 
not absolutely determine the question of the origin of souls. Adam's 
soul was the breath of God which pre-existed, but it pre-existed as 
breath, not as a soul. The breathing into Adam's nostrils was the 
creation of the soul ; and if a creation, its pre-existence is im- 
peached. Modern theology rejects the doctrine of pre-existence, and 
wisely. 

To Plato's arguments, however. In the Phcedo the philosopher dem- 
onstrates that knowledge is reminiscence ; an act of memory is the 
recalling of knowledge in a previous state ; the memory is a waxen 
tablet, containing eternal impressions ; what modern psychology styles 
"innate ideas" is proof of previous knowledge ; the soul knows some 
things on its own account, and by itself, which is evidence of its pre- 
existent state. These arguments are expanded in the Thecetetus, and 
repeated in the Phcedrus and the Meno ; in the former, rejecting the 
theory of sense-knowledge, he interprets soul-knowledge as reminis- 
cence, and reminiscence is the sign of pre-existence ; in the latter he 
insists on the purity of soul-knowledge, and a like interpretation is 
irresistible. He even goes further, and describes the process of 
soul-knowledge, or the acquisition of beauty and truth, as the swell- 
ing of the wings of the soul ; " the whole boils and throbs violently" 
in the eagerness to recall " the most blessed of all mysteries," a knowl- 
edge of the truth it lost by union with the body. 

The error of this psychology is the confounding of reminiscence 
and the intuitional facts of consciousness, which, instead of supporting 
the doctrine of pre-existence, supports the doctrine of immortality, 
pointing forward instead of backward. Aristotle opposed the doctrine 
of reminiscence. The soul, Plato divides, in the Republic, into three 
parts; viz. , the rational, the concupiscent, and the irascible. The rational 
or reasoning part, which is immortal, he locates in the head; the 
concupiscent or afifectional part, and the irascible or passionate part, 
both of which are mortal, he locates in the heart and liver. Aristotle 
located the mortal part in the heart only. Repugnant as is this 



MORAL CHARACTER OF THE SOUL. 39 

division to our Christian sense, and self-contradictory in its contents as 
it is, for it is subversive of the idea of the unity of the soul, Plato 
nevertheless holds to the doctrine of immortality for the intellectual 
part of the soul. The intellect is immortal ; the intellect, therefore, 
alone pre-existed, if the doctrine of pre-existence be true. The af- 
fectional and passionate elements of the soul must be the products of 
the bodily organization, or, at the least, the results of the intellectual 
and physical union, either of which being true, the modern theory 
of life as the product of organization has some justification. It has 
a foothold in Plato. The soul is either immortal or mortal, not both ; 
if immortal, then it is not the product of the bodily organization ; if 
mortal, it may be the result of organized matter, as is the eye. 

More of the immortality of the soul a little later ; just now let us 
listen to Plato concerning its nature. "What it is" — see the Phce- 
drus — "would in every way require a divine and lengthened exposi- 
tion to tell, but what it is like, a human and a shorter one." From 
this he proceeds to liken it "to the combined power of a pair of 
winged steeds and a charioteer," describing its activities by the con- 
duct of the steeds, and its government by the wisdom of the charioteer. 
Sometimes the steeds are of noble extraction — then the soul is virtu- 
ous, good; sometimes they are of the "opposite extraction," and drag 
the soul down to the earth. In this metaphorical way Plato repre- 
sents the moral character of the soul, confessing that it has suffered 
loss by union with the body, which loads it with corruptions, and 
clips its wings so that it falls to the ground. In the Laws he affirms 
that the soul is "most divine;" that it is a leader in the heavens; 
that it has received some of the properties of the gods; that it is 
"altogether superior to the body;" and that it is the "oldest" of all 
things, and "rules over all bodies." Magnificent conjectures, equal 
to revelations, are these. 

Conceding greatness to the soul, and affirming its godlike character, 
Plato preaches depravity as emphatically as John Calvin or Paul. In 
the Cratylus the body is spoken of as the sepulcher of the soul, and 
the "mark" of the soul. The soul makes its mark with the body. 
It is in the Republic, however, that he dilates upon the "four de- 
pravities," dividing the soul into mortal and immortal, and assigning 
to the mortal part the lusts, affections, appetites, and angers of human 
nature. Its degradation is affirmed as the result of true union of body 
and intellect. Plato declares his conviction that very many men are 
"profoundly wicked," and in representing ours as an iron race, he 
means that it is a fallen race ; fallen from the golden period ; fallen 
from purity ; fallen from knowledge. In the Laws he affirms that, 
"of all evils, the greatest is implanted in the souls of a major part 



40 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

of mankind," and pitifully exclaims that, while each one is anxious 
for a pardon, no one devises a plan for avoiding evil. The soul of a 
slave, he asserts, is unhealthy, and the soul of a woman is more vi- 
cious than that of a man. Speaking of the pains of the soul, he 
enumerates in the Philebus "anger, fear, desire, lamentation, love, 
emulation, envy, and all other such passions;" and argues in the 
Memo that virtue must be communicated, if at all, by a certain 
" divine fate," or the favor of the deity. 

Depravity implies something more than positive impulses to evil; 
it implies what is more serious, what Plato is constantly teaching and 
in manifold ways striving to impress upon his disciples, and that is, 
that the soul is ignorant of itself. Ignorance is the greatest depravity. 

Of this ignorance he speaks in the Laws thus: "Almost all men 
appear to have been nearly ignorant of what the soul happens to be, 
and what power it possesses with respect to other things belongiDg to 
it, and its generation besides — how that it is amongst the first of sub- 
stances and before all, and that more than any thing else it rules over 
the change and altered arrangement of bodies." Elsewhere he re- 
peats the sentiment when he says that, whether man is a "plaything 
of the gods" or the result of a " serious act," we can not tell. 

In these statements concerning the soul, especially the references 
to depravity, we recognize familiar truth ; not the truth in a Scrip- 
tural form, but the truth to which all men bear witness. Plato wrote 
from observation, experience, history, reflection — sources of knowledge 
always to be respected. Kejecting the mythology woven with the 
study of the origin of the soul, it must be allowed that he has repre- 
sented its character as a whole in a masterful manner ; and, rejecting 
his three-fold classification of soul, it is granted that it almost accu- 
rately represents the manifestations of soul life. He was ever on the 
border of truth; in these instances he well-nigh expressed experi- 
mental facts. 

Remembering that, according to Plato, the intellect alone is immor- 
tal, it will be profitable to note his explanations of intellect, or the 
mental processes, and the limits he assigns to intellectual inquiry ; for 
he considers all these questions, furnishing in his conclusions many 
psychological hints which modern philosophy might appropriate to its 
advantage. The ancients compared intellect to water, because it is 
"sober;" but Plato in the Philebus observes that, "mind is either 
the same thing as truth, or of all things the most like to it." No 
material thing resembles or suggests the nature of mind. It is truth, 
or, as in the Cratylus, it is power, unmixed power, which is a better 
definition than the other, in that it is not so abstract, nor so inde- 
finable. Mind is power, or as again in the Philebus, it " is a relation 



SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE. 41 

to cause, and is nearly of that genus;" that is, mind is cause or 
causal power, an exact definition, a true conception of its opera- 
tions ; mind an unmixed, independent, originating, truth-inspiring, causal 
power. 

This is Plato's starting-point, from which he advances to the study 
of the sources of knowledge, or how it is obtained ; and here he is 
explicit, counteracting the empiricism of his day by defending the 
mind against all attacks, by exhibiting its power to know some things 
on its own account, by examining the theory of sensuous knowledge, 
and by insisting on the superior value of moral and philosophical 
truth. Whence is knowledge? From within, or from without, or 
from both within and without? There is room here for extremes — 
the extreme of empiricism, the extreme of subjective idealism, or 
Eleaticism. In its answers philosophy has vibrated to the one or the 
other, whereas a true psychology will recognize the double source of 
knowledge, a mixed or empirieo-idealistic source of sensations appropri- 
ated by and intermingled with the facts of consciousness, thus giving 
employment in the acquisition of knowledge to both senses and intel- 
lect. Plato avoided the extreme of empiricism; he did not entirely 
avoid the extreme of idealism. He was an idealist ; he was a ration- 
alist; his psychology was a reaction from the Sophists, who insisted 
that man could not know any thing, and from the floating sensualism 
of the materialists. He defined the mind, explained and vindicated 
its processes, justified its deductions, and announced its empire to be 
the universe of being. He enthroned mind, and dethroned the 
senses, making them subordinate and tributary to intellect. 

He relates in the Phcedrus the temple tale that ' ' the first prophetic 
words issued from an oak," and remarks that men in the ancient 
days, in their simplicity, listened to an oak and a stone, "if only 
they spoke the truth;" but, evidently, this is an ironical swording of 
empiricism. Knowledge is not in the oak or stone. In the same 
dialogue Plato also considers the fable that traces the sciences to the 
revelations of the gods, but this is unsatisfactory. If knowledge 
springs neither from nature nor the gods, w T hat is its source? Let it 
be conceded that the senses are avenues of communication between 
the outer world of matter and the inner world of mind ; what of 
sense-knowledge ? What is its character ? What its value ? In the 
Philebus Plato represents the sciences as rushing into the mind through 
the senses, and in the Theadetus, that they possess it, or the science- 
possessed mind is like an "aviary of birds." But the crowding of 
the mind with the sciences is not true knowledge ; it is not ample 
knowledge ; it is not satisfying knowledge. All such knowledge 
Plato underrated and in a sense rejected, compelled so to do by the 



42 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

lofty view he entertained of mind. The mind is not sense-bound ; it 
is not dependent on the senses. Sight and hearing, he affirms in the 
Phcedo, do not convey truth to men, and "if these bodily senses are 
neither accurate nor clear, much less can the others be so, for they 
are all inferior to these." Again, he writes that the soul, "when it 
employs the body to examine any thing, is drawn by the body to 
things that never continue the same, and wanders, and is confused, 
and reels as if intoxicated through coming into contact with things of 
this kind." In the Thecetetus he defines the senses as instruments of 
the mind, but imperfect; and again, in the Phcedo, characterizes 
them as "full of deception," and cautions against a great reliance 
upon them. Gorgias having taught, in vindication of sense-knowk 
edge, that the qualities of things might be perceived by the senses, 
Plato annihilates the position in the Meno, and in the Thecetetus he 
shows that sight and science are by no means the same. 

Without referring further, it is clear that Plato uprooted empiri-. 
cism, and prepared the way for a very radical but rational psychology. 
His primary question in the Thecetetus is, what is it to knowt Is it to 
"have" science? This he repudiates, as also many other things 
which the parties in the dialogue submit as answers. Unfortunately, 
the dialogue closes without a satisfactory settlement of the question; 
but fortunately, in the Cratylus, he defines thought as the "looking- 
into and agitating a begetting," or a bringing forth of ideas and 
truths, and that the "soul marches along with things;" and here he 
defines man as "contemplating what he sees." In the Philebus the 
soul's act in the acquisition of knowledge is represented as the writing 
of a speech ; the soul produces speeches within itself. From these 
fragments we learn that Plato's idea of man is that he is a contem- 
plator, a reflector, a thinker ; a begetter of thoughts ; an inquirer, a 
marcher; a speech-maker. Knowledge is not science, but thought. 
Knowledge is acquired, not through the senses, but by the mind. 

Easily and consistently Plato passes from the nature of knowledge 
to the power of mind itself, asserting, as in the Thecetetus, that the 
soul in thinking discourses with itself; that it beholds things by itself; 
and, as in the Phcedrus, that it is nourished by and thrives upon the 
truth. Truth, not nature, is the food of the soul. The soul can 
shut itself up with truth, or be content with its own facts, not re- 
garding the outer world at all. He asserts in the Phcedo that if one 
should " approach a subject by means of the mental faculties, neither 
employing the sight in conjunction with the reflective faculty, nor in- 
troducing any other sense together with reasoning," but, " using pure 
reflection by itself" in the search of pure essence, he "will arrive, 
if any one can, at the knowledge of that which is." Expanding this 



LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE. 43 

proposition, he concludes that "if we are ever to know any thing 
purely, we must be separated from the body, and contemplate the 
things themselves by the mere soul." Surely this is a revelation of 
soul-power which empirical psychology has not understood, and against 
which it has virtually arrayed itself by the emphasis with which it 
defends the theory of sensuous knowledge. According to Plato, the 
bodily senses are hindrances to pure knowledge ; according to the 
empiricists, knowledge is impossible without their aid — they are the 
only sources or avenues of knowledge. Between the two, the differ- 
ence is that between the highest idealism and the grossest ma- 
terialism ; as between the Platonic conception of mind, and the 
associationalist's conception, one must accept the former, since 
it dignifies the soul, gives it independence, and foreshadows its im- 
mortality. 

Announcing the independent, truth-acquiring propensity of the 
soul, Plato foresees certain limits to human knowledge, arising out 
of the combination of soul and body, which suffocates aspiration and 
blockades advance. Self-stimulating as the mind is, it gropes amid 
outward things, seeing and knowing them at first only superficially, 
and grows slowly into correct apprehension of phenomena. He illus- 
trates in the Thecetetus the gradual process of mind-opening by the 
fact that one sees letters without knowing their meaning, and hears 
the language of a barbarian without understanding it ; he sees and 
hears without knowing; sense-perception, sense-knowledge, must be 
followed by mind-perception and mind-knowledge. As if relating a 
dream, Plato then teaches that the first elements can not be explained 
by reason ; that an element can not be defined ; but things com- 
pounded of them may be explained and understood. He illustrates 
by the following example : the word Socrates is composed of syllables, 
and the syllables of elements, or sounds ; so, a syllable, is composed 
of s and o ; but s is a consonant, a sound, and can not be defined. 
Compounds, therefore, we may understand ; elements are indefinable. 
Applying this to nature, or the universe, it is clear that it may be 
understood only in its component relations ; as a product of elemental 
principles, forces, or facts, it may be analyzed ; but the original ele- 
ments, named, pointed out, discovered, yet elude significant interpre- 
tation. In the Statesman it is shown that the soul, suffering thus 
respecting the elements, fluctuates sometimes respecting all things, 
even the " comminglings," or the combinations of the elements, and 
that it arrives only at a small portion of truth. Catching up the 
Heraclitic idea of the "becoming," he applies it in the Oratylus to 
our knowledge of beauty, saying it is always "secretly going away," 
that even " while we are speaking about it, it becomes immediately 



44 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

something else ; " so that it can not be known by any one. This is a 
leaning toward the Eleatic principle of the "one," which, however, 
Plato guarded against by asserting the reality- of the "manifold," a 
knowledge of which is limited to compounds. 

Confessing the limitations of knowledge, how just the rebuke he 
administers in the Euthydemus to Dionysiodorus, who held that if one 
knew any thing he knew all things ! Man is not all-ignorant, nor 
all-knowing ; he knows some things ; the soul knows truth when it 
sees it ; it knows the outer world ; but it knows not completely in 
this present state. 

The subject of limitation is renewed in the Seventh Epistle, in the 
discussion of the steps to progressive knowledge, Plato stating the first 
requisite to be the name of a thing ; second, its definition ; third, its 
resemblance ; fourth, its science ; but, proceeding in this order in the 
analysis of a truth, or a thing, the philosopher adds that it is of uncer- 
tain value. For there is no fixed name for any thing, as a round 
thing might be called straight ; there is nothing in a name as men 
use names; and " the same assertion is true of a definition." Human 
knowledge is a speculation. 

From this extreme concession or morbid surrender, Plato rebounds 
both in the Philebus and the Banquet, carrying us back to the heights 
of soul-knowledge, to knowledge of the abstract, of being, of essence, 
and showing that his compromises of the powers of mind were inci- 
dental only. In the Philebus he declares the substance of good to 
consist of beauty, symmetry, and truth, the "bounds of the intelli- 
gible," a knowledge of which it is in the power of mind to obtain. 
It must hunt for them ; it may find them. In a most elegant man- 
ner he speaks in the Banquet of the process of knowledge as an 
"ascending," a march by one's self, going "from the beauty of bodies 
(to the beauty of soul, and from the beauty of soul) to that of pur- 
suits; from the beauty of pursuits to that of doctrines; until he 
arrives at length from the beauty of doctrines (generally) to that single 
one relating to nothing else than beauty in the abstract (and he knows 
at last what is the beautiful itself)." The steps, please observe: body, 
soul, pursuit, doctrine, the abstract. This is an intellectual ascension, 
which modern psychology would do well to embrace. 

Nor is this all. Plato defines logos in the Theo3tetus to be the 
science of the difference; that is, it implies the elimination from a thing 
of all qualities common to other things, and the discovery of that 
particular quality, element, function, or prerogative which, remaining, 
separates it from all other things, and distinguishes it as an inde- 
pendent and individual object. This process of elimination, separa- 
tion, winnowing, or whatever it may be called, is the province of 



HUMAN DEPRA VITY. 45 

dialectics, in which Plato was a master, and which he demonstrated 
to be possible in the study of truth. 

This is the summit of Plato's psychology — a knowledge of the ab- 
stract, a knowledge of the logos of truth, of all things ; a knowledge 
of soul ; self-knowledge, truth-knowledge. Heights, these ; beyond 
them, only the heights of the eternal. 

With the psychological coDception of man the purely ethical branch 
of Plato's philosophy is closely related. Ethics he could not avoid; 
philosophy can not avoid it. In this department it demonstrates its 
utility to the race, or exposes its insufficiency, in either case deter- 
mining the value of philosophy as a practical pursuit. In its theo- 
logical bearings, it may be speculative ; in its psychological revelations, 
it may be abstract and concrete; in its ethics, it is concrete. 

Plato's Republic is a miniature of ethical principles, both as they 
respect the State and the individual, while his Laws are the details of 
practical, social, moral, and civil life. However, the ethical beliefs, 
sanctions, and discriminations of Plato are reflected, like his psychol- 
ogy, in all his dialogues, sometimes as mere hints, then as open 
declarations; sometimes in dialectical form, then as prescriptive state- 
ments; but always sufficiently transparent and sufficiently positive, 
though not always essentially sound. To his theory of the origin of 
evil we take exception on philosophic, historic, and religious grounds. 
It is philosophically erroneous, historically contradictory, religiously 
absurd. Of evil, as the antagonistic principle in the universe, located 
in inert matter, we have already spoken, but we recall it in this 
connection. To this remote origin Plato traces it. 

That man is a partaker of vice, degraded, contaminated, Plato un- 
equivocally asserts; that he is not good by nature, he teaches in the 
Meno; that he is ignorant of virtue, he shows both in the Laches and 
the Meno, and proves in the latter that it can neither be taught nor 
acquired as science; that the soul is burdened with baseness and in- 
justice, he declares and establishes in the Gorgias, and re-affirms its 
ignorance and diseases in the Sophist; that evil is a deep disease is 
manifest in the Lysis; that the major part of mankind are wrecks, 
and that, in comparison with the gods, every man is vile, that passion 
is inherent and man the most savage of animals, Plato confesses in 
the Laws. Let this testimony to ''total depravity" be sufficient. 

His condemnation of evil is explicit, strong, wrathful. In the 
Crito it is declared that it is not right to do evil ; in the Gorgias, that 
"to act unjustly is the greatest of evils," that intemperance is disor- 
der, that it is dreadful to be discordant with "myself," that an "in- 
satiable and intemperate " life is reprehensible ; in the Minos, that in- 
toxication must be forbidden ; in the Banquet, that drunkenness is a 



46 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

crime, and ' ' shame for bad acts " is the glory of a man ; in the Laws, 
that to live without justice is not good, that intoxication is not of a 
" trifling nature," and man drunk is again a child, and that idleness, 
slander, theft, murder, profane oaths, and human sacrifices are crimes 
in the sight of gods and men. 

Equally strong is he in his encouragements and persuasions to seek 
the good and avoid the evil. Man, as in the Crito, should not be anxious 
about living, but about living well; an unjust person or an unhealthy 
soul, as in the Gorgias, is miserable ; good is the end of all actions ; 
the depraved soul should be restrained ; he is happy who has no vice 
in his soul ; as in the Protagoras, the soul needs training and healing ; 
justice " bears the nearest possible resemblance to holiness," therefore 
practice it ; the safety of life consists in the right choice of pleasure 
and pain ; as in the Cratyhis, the soul that moves badly, or in a 
"restrained and shackled manner," is depraved, it needs freedom; as 
in the Philebus, pleasure is not the chief good, nor even intellect, but 
the mixed life of intellect and pleasure; as in the Charmides, ''tem- 
perance is the practice of things good ;" as in the Menexenus, "knowl- 
edge separated from justice appears to be knavery ;" as in the 
Minos, "right is a royal law," it has science in it; as in the Second 
Epistle, evil must be removed if the soul meet with truth ; as in the 
Ninth Epistle, " each is not born for himself alone," but must recog- 
nize the claims of country, parents, and friends; as in the Laws, 
children should reverence parents, making images to their memory, 
and old men should not do shameless things before children ; aud 
crystallizes the whole in these: virtue is the basis of all honor; 
"truth is the leader of every good" What lofty instructions here ! 

Recognizing the depravity of soul, condemning evil, and postulat- 
ing the necessity of virtue, what remedy does Plato offer for depravity? 
What is the impulsive ethical force of his philosophy? Let us not 
expect too much from one piloting himself in a new region. He 
leads; let us follow. He recognizes the difficulty, wrestling with it 
in no uncertain, but, as we shall find, in an insufficient manner. In 
the Protagoras he points out the difficulty of becoming a good man, 
" square as to his hands and feet and mind, fashioned without fault;" 
but in the Banquet he exhorts to obtain the good, and in the Euthyde- 
mus he exclaims with the vehemence of a seeker, "Let him destroy me, 
and, if he will, boil me, or do whatever else he pleases with me, if he does 
but render me a good man" Could spiritual yearning go farther? 

The acquisition of good, according to Plato, is conditional upon 
self-knowledge and a knowledge of good, both of which may be ob- 
tained by the pursuit of both in a philosophical manner. This is the 
kernel of the ethical theory of Plato. In the First Alcibiades he in- 



UNSOUND ETHICAL PRINCIPLES. 47 

sists that we must know ourselves before we can make ourselves bet- 
ter, illustrating it in this way, that if one does not know what a finger- 
ring is, he can not make better finger-rings. Self-knowledge is the 
primary condition of improvement ; this results in the exposure of 
the concupiscent soul, and all the depravities of the irascible nature. 
No one will dispute Plato at this point ; but when, as in the Protagoras, 
he undertakes to show that "no man errs willingly," and, as in the 
Banquet, that all men desire good to be present, we suspend judgment 
a moment to inquire what he means. He reveals the depravity of 
the soul, but are we to understand that it is an involuntary depravity 1 
If so, he is in perfect accord with the Biblical representation of man's 
original corruption; but he departs from it if he means that evil, as 
a manifested product in the life, is equally involuntary. The inner 
man may be involuntarily depraved, the outer man is voluntarily 
depraved. Nature is involuntary in its contents.; conduct is wholly 
voluntary. Plato is not discerning" at this point, or he is too lenient 
in the interpretation of wrong in man's history. Self-knowledge leads 
to the discovery of the voluntary as well as the involuntary in human 
history, and one can not be ignored any more than the other. Strong 
as the involuntary principle of evil is, the world suffers more from 
voluntary evils, or the free exercise of the involuntary principle. 
Crime is the voluntary manifestation of the involuntary principle; 
sin is the voluntary disturbance of God's order in the universe. The 
involuntary excites sympathy ; the voluntary, approval or condemna- 
tion, as it embraces right or wrong. The one is authoritative ; the 
other is within control, and may be directed or suppressed. Plato's 
sentiment is an apology for evil, internal and external ; it is, there- 
fore, ethically unsound. 

The knowledge of good precedes the acquisition of good. This 
Platonic condition we accept. What is the good? What are its es- 
sentials, its signs, its functions ? With these questions Plato struggles 
in the Philebus, announcing that beauty, symmetry, and truth prevail 
in the form of good ; in the Laches, teaching that fortitude is related 
to the good ; in the Laws, showing the difference between divine and 
human good, mentioning as elements of the latter the four virtues, 
prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. As if not quite satisfied 
witji these attempts at definition, he adds in the Laws that the perfect 
man is the reflective man, or reason is a quality of goodness, and that 
the good man governs himself, or is capable of self-control ; in his 
Seventh Epistle he advises Dionysius to be in accord with himself, as 
if self-harmony were the content of goodness ; and in the Charmides 
he discusses the problem of "living scientifically," which he finally 
resolves into a knowledge of the science of good and evil. 



48 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

The sum of these fragments is that good is a complex content, 
consisting of truth, symmetry, beauty, prudence, temperance, forti- 
tude, justice, reason, harmony, and scientific order ; a catalogue of 
noble virtues, possessing which, the soul will not be " barren nor un- 
fruitful" in the things that make for righteousness and peace. 

How may they be secured? How may the good be obtained? 
This is the crucial question of theology, of philosophy, of Plato, who 
fancies that he has prescribed a sufficient remedy for evil, and sug- 
gested a way for the attainment of good. His answer is three-fold, 
theological, religious, and philosophical, the merits of which will be 
seen when the answer is fully given. The theologieal answer relates 
to the infallibility of conscience as a guide into all truth, Plato, es- 
pecially in the First Alcibiades, referring to it as a sufficient monitor 
and helper. The "daemon" of Socrates has furnished a topic for 
many an essay and discussion, some writers finding it difficult to 
reconcile it with the conscience ; but it seems to us very difficult to 
reconcile it with any thing else, unless we identify it with the Holy 
Spirit, which we are not prepared to do. The power of conscience, 
as a prompting influence in morals, as an inspiration toward the right, 
We fully grant ; but the world needs something more than a con- 
science. It needs truth, which will enable the conscience properly to 
act, for it is an indisputed fact that the unenlightened conscience, if- it 
does not reprove, does not always restrain from wrong-doing, especially 
if such wrong-doing is sanctioned by religious teaching. The con- 
science may be guided or become a guide, in proportion to its knowl- 
edge of right and wrong. In itself, it is without such knowledge ; it 
needs truth, therefore. The Bible represents the need of the Holy 
Spirit as a reprover, a teacher, a guide, a comforter, inasmuch as 
man's conscience will not always reprove, or teach, or guide. Accord- 
ing to the Bible, man can not guide himself into the truth ; he needs 
truth, and he needs God to guide him into the truth. Of the 
"daemon" of Socrates and Plato, we do not find that it was an 
illuminator, or guide into truth, but a restraining influence in conduct, 
checking the disposition to evil, the purpose to do wrong. In the 
Theages Plato clearly distinguishes between the conscience as a re* 
straining and inciting power, affirming that it "dissuades and does 
not suffer me to do" wrong, "but it never at any time incites me" 
to do right. Evidently, then, the inciting power, the guiding influ- 
ence to truth, is not in the conscience. Plato's theological answer 
is incomplete. 

The religious answer relates to the utility of prayer as an agency 
in the world's moral elevation. Plato is a believer in prayer; he 
prays to the gods; he recommends sacrifices and festivals in their 



ED UCA TION PL A TO'S REMED Y. 49 

honor ; but he records no answers to his prayers. This has been over- 
• looked by the students of Plato ; its announcement is now made for 
the first time. At the close of the Phcedrus, Socrates is made to offer 
the following beautiful prayer: "O, beloved Pan, and all ye other 
gods of this place, grant me to become beautiful in the inner man, 
and that whatever outward things I have may be at peace with those 
within." What a prayer! Was it genuine, or a mere concession to 
the polytheism of the country ? A genuine heart-yearning for good 
Plato possessed, but he trusted neither to the restraining conscience 
nor unanswered prayer for its acquisition. 

The great remedy for evil, the chief agency in the acquisition of 
good, is education ; this is Plato's philosophical answer, it is the answer 
of modern philosophy. Both in the Meno and the Sophist he teaches 
the value of correct opinion, and that confutation is the greatest of 
purifications. Both in the Protagoras and the Lysis he enforces the 
duty of education. In the Rivals he shows that to be ignorant of 
one's self is to be of unsound mind. He labors in the Laws espe- 
cially to prove that ignorance is the cause of crime, which leads him 
to recommend education as a preventive ; but the disease is not fairly 
stated, hence the remedy is inadequate. The principle that vice is a 
mental disease is erroneous in fact, and in contradiction of the natu- 
ral depravity which the philosopher attributes' to the mortal part of 
the soul. Vice is a spiritual disease, to be overcome by a spiritual 
remedy ; but Plato did not diagnose correctly ; hence did not pre- 
scribe accurately or sufficiently. A disease may be determined by its 
remedy, and the remedy required may be indicated by the disease. 
Consumption requires complicated treatment ; a pin-scratch scarcely 
any notice. If the evil taint is interpreted as a misfortune or weak- 
ness that may easily be overcome ; if its deadly spirit is not recog- 
nized ; if it is pronounced, on the one hand, a superficial blemish, or, 
on the other, an ineradicable bent, the philosophical remedies for it 
will be educational, social, legislative, philanthropic, but neither spirit- 
ual nor divine. If, as Theodore Parker held, sin is but the tripping 
of a child, a blunder, a mistake, an unfortunate step, then, indeed, 
its bad effects are within personal control. From Plato to Parker, 
through all the various evolutions of transcendentalism, there has been 
no adequate interpretation of the evil principle, no solution of the evil 
germ, either as to its origin or character, and no discovery of a satis- 
factory antidote. All along the line the failure has been complete. 
Plato's remedy — education — is the best that philosophy has ever sug- 
gested, the best outside of a divine religion. Let it be known as 
Plato's patent-right remedy for evil ; it is not original with Herbert 
Spencer, therefore, or with modern thought. 

4 



50 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

The potency of culture, the civilizing influence of education, the 
intellectual improvement that man has made within twenty centuries, 
justifies the establishment of schools, colleges, the press, the publica- 
tion of books, and all the efforts now making to emancipate the race 
from the thralldom of ignorance. Education is a universal necessity, 
but it is not an adequate remedy for sin. Even Athens, with its 
superior culture, decayed ; and Greece, with philosophers in all its 
cities, declined in morals, because there was no impelling force behind 
philosophic teaching. Valuable as is culture, it is wanting in the 
moral power to deliver from evil, especially to eradicate it from the 
nature. 

The education prescribed by Plato was not of a character to in- 
spire a love of the beautiful, or to incline the soul to righteousness. 
He speaks often of a u liberal education," but the curriculum em- 
braced gymnastics, equestrian skill, as in the Laches, dancing, music, 
arithmetic, and astronomy, as in the Laws. He mourns over the 
" slave-like cut of hair" in the souls of men, talks freely of popular 
education among the Persians, as in the First Alcibiades, but, while 
suggesting philosophy to the few as the cure for their evils, he orders 
the above, both for boys and girls, as a sufficient preparation for life, 
and an adequate security against depravity. In the Republic he pre- 
scribes four virtues for the ideal man; viz., wisdom, temperance, 
fortitude, and justice, the strong pillars of human character; but 
these are the products of individual endeavor, the results of phil- 
osophic study, of a persevering purpose, and of the observance of a 
rigid asceticism. The weakness of the educational method, consisting 
in part in a superficial estimate of evil, is evident in this, that it at- 
tributes the power of moral change or moral elevation wholly to the 
individual. He regenerates himself by the force of education ; the 
sources and agencies of moral change are within himself. This Plato 
taught ; this modern philosophy teaches ; and it all grows out of the 
theory of evil as a superficial hindrance to the development of char- 
acter, to be removed by self-effort, by the educational process. 

Of some evils Plato has a deep abhorrence, as drunkenness, glut- 
tony, unchaste pleasures, and laziness ; and for this reason he excludes 
the poets from his Republic, especially Homer, whose falsehoods, fables, 
and immoralities, as given in the Iliad, he exposes with a merciless 
hand, insisting that the literature of the poets excites the predisposi- 
tion to evil, and is contaminating in every respect. At the same 
time, evil-hater as he was, he permits the governors in his Republic 
to lie under given circumstances ; and in his Laws a person is per- 
mitted to steal pears, apples, and pomegranates, if he does it " se- 
cretly," that is, if not caught at it. Such are some of the inconsist- 



POSITIVE RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS. 51 

encies in Plato's educational method, involving a hatred of some evils, 
but a superficial estimate of evil, as the ruining force in the world. 

In this connection it is all-important to inquire what relation he 
assigns to religion in his ethical economy. Has religion, as a princi- 
ple, as an office, or prerogative, any recognition in Plato ? The term 
"religion " embraces a multiple of ideas, more or less fundamental, which 
appear in crude or developed forms in religious structures and insti- 
tutions, being prominent in permanent religions and obscure in the 
transient. Plato's religious conceptions, lifted out of their polytheis- 
tic environment, have a fundamental value, and are the organic 
ideas, so far as they go, of the best religions, if not of the divine. 
The paganism of Plato is not ultra ; rather is it the accidental glam- 
our of the popular faith. 

Kespecting the existence of God, having already spoken of his 
belief, it is enough now to recall the fact that he is a monotheist ; 
but Plato's monotheism included a broad, circumstantial view of a 
divine government, manifesting itself in the providential, and, there- 
fore, minutely careful, supervision of this world. This feature of a di- 
vinely governing influence in human affairs Plato develops in the Laws, 
discussing the origin of the prevailing doubt respecting it, and conclu- 
sively establishing that the small no less than the great affairs in this 
world are under divine supervision. Wonderfully inspiring is the 
thought that God has a particular plan for each individual, and that, 
however small the plan, it stretches "its view to the whole," is re- 
lated to a universal plan ; and equally faith -inspiring is the thought 
that God has a plan for the ultimate triumph of virtue. Virtue 
will gain the victory in the universe. This is evangelical philoso- 
phy; its failure is in not pointing out the "plan." Just here, how- 
ever, the religion and ethics of Plato unite. 

Believing in God, worship, sacrifices, temples, prayers, Plato 
does not hesitate to enjoin religious duties, consistently recognizing the 
spontaneous activities of the religious nature of man in these direc- 
tions. In the Republic he says temples should be erected to the Del- 
phian Apollo, and sacrifices should be offered to the gods who know, 
see, and hear all things ; but this is suggested in a faint-hearted way, 
as if some recognition must be made to the popular religiou. In the 
Laws, however, Plato is undisguisedly an advocate of the polytheistic 
institutions, denouncing impiety, sacrilege, and atheism, and pre- 
scribing punishments therefor. No one, he affirms, should be ele- 
vated to the position of guardian of the laws who denies the existence 
of the gods. 

As to prayers, he continually orders them in the Laws; in the 
Eighth Epistle he says "it is meet to begin from the gods in every 



52 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

thing ;" in the Philebus he speaks of the presence of a favoring deity, 
and intimates the helpfulness of prayer in study ; and the Second Al- 
cibiades is a dialogue almost wholly devoted to the consideration of 
the utility of prayer. Carefulness in prayer, a study of what the 
gods are likely to grant, he assumes, will restrain the praying spirit, 
and prevent the utterance of intemperate requests, while a study of 
the prayers of the Lacedaemonians will show that the gods prefer a 
" good-omened address" to a multitude of meaningless sacrifices. The 
dialogue leaves the impression that prayer is, on the whole, of doubt- 
ful value. 

Is the doctrine of spiritual influence recognized by Plato ? Not 
frequently, nor even thoroughly, and yet somewhat beautifully, caus- 
ing us to suspect that Plato does not record all his experiences, or 
express definitely all his convictions respecting the communicating in- 
fluence of God's spirit. In the Apology Socrates is made to say that 
the Deity called him to philosophize, a call analogous to that which, 
every evangelical minister claims as having been extended to him ; 
and in the Phcedrus he confesses that he is " moved by some divine 
influence " which envelops even the place where he is sitting, and 
makes it divine. This means wonderful illumination, attributed by 
Plato to a divine source. Discoursing on the prophetic art, he pro- 
nounces it a divine madness, and as to its result he says that which 
comes from God is nobler than that which proceeds from men. 

In respect to spiritual living, Plato teaches in the Second Alcibiades 
that the mist must be removed by the divine being from the soul, as 
Minerva removed it from the eyes of Diomede, that he might see 
gods and men ; and in the Laws he strictly enjoins that one must 
live after the manner of the gods, saying that similarity to the deity 
is pleasing in his sight. Depravity must be cured; this he urges in 
the Laws. He intimates the existence of a cure, without describing 
it, in the Charmides, as an incantation which restores body and soul 
to health and purity ; but, alas ! where or what is the incantation ? 
Shall we turn to the Euthyphron and listen to Plato as he discourses 
on holiness? What is holiness? asks the interlocutor. This is a 
fundamental question ; Plato's answer is not fundamental, for he does 
not know. Definitions, many and bordering on a true conception of 
holiness, are given, but each is unsatisfactory, because incomplete, 
and lacking a divine element or force. Holiness is the prosecution 
of injustice; "that which is pleasing to the gods is holy;" "that 
which <fehe gods love is holy ;" holiness is a part of justice ; it is a 
knowledge of sacrifice and praying. Such are the humdrum defini- 
tions in the dialogue, but all are finally abandoned by Plato himself, 
without a settlement of the question, What is holiness ? In the Phi- 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 53 

lebus he brings forward the subject of purity, and really expands it 
satisfactorily in the guise of an illustration. The purity of white, 
says Plato, is that " in which there is no portion of any other color." 
Admirable, but he fails in the application ; indeed, he makes no ap- 
plication. Holiness is that in which there is no portion of any thing 
unlike it, but Plato does not say this ; he did not grasp it ; he had not 
experienced it. His holiness was abstract, not concrete — localized, if 
at all, in matter, not in men. 

The religion of Plato included more than sacrifices, prayers, faith, 
temples, and conformity to a god-like life. In some respects he may 
be viewed as a doctrinal teacher, or expounder of certain eschatolog- 
ical truths, fundamental to all religions, mythological as well as the 
truly historical and real. These truths Plato does not shun ; he seeks 
them, uses them as the instrument of persuasion to a holy life, draw- 
ing arguments from heaven and hell to impress men to follow the 
deity. The question of the future life was then as vital, as absorb- 
ing, as it is now. Belief in it was universal. The thought of the 
immortality of the soul, vaguely accepted, exerted a potent influence 
on the conduct, and often subdued men into respect for righteousness. 
Plato was the first to elaborate the doctrine, to establish it by unan- 
swerable proof, succeeding better than our own Emerson, who reduces 
it to a hope, or a belief in it to a guess. 

Of the spirituality of the soul, we have sufficiently spoken ; of 
the proofs of its immortality, we may now rehearse those of Plato, 
premising that, studying them in their fullness, they appear incontro- 
vertible. Gleaning the dialogues, we hear him say in the Banquet 
that men "have a yearning for immortality;" in the Philebus, that 
the soul is full of expectations, making speeches to itself of the fu- 
ture ; in the Republic, that evil can not destroy the soul as disease the 
body, but that it is immortal; in the Phcedo, that "there are two 
species of things, the one visible, the other invisible ;" the invisible 
always continues the same, but "the visible never the same;" and 
the soul being invisible, must always be the same, and therefore im- 
mortal. Again, in the Banquet, that while the body is " being per- 
petually altered," and even manners, morals, opinions, and sciences 
change, the soul abideth forever ; in the First Alcibiades, that as the 
user of tools and the tools are different, so soul and body are differ- 
ent; in the Phcedrus, declaring "every soul is immortal;" in the 
Phcedo again, that pre-existence, which he taught," is the proof of im- 
mortality, and that future punishment, being necessary, could not be 
experienced without future existence; and also that there are two 
kinds of things, the one compounded, the other simple. The com- 
pounded may be dissolved, but the simple is indissoluble ; the soul, 



54 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

being an uncompounded unit, is necessarily immortal. Again, that 
the soul can not admit the " contrary of life," which is death ; and 
in the Crito, that Socrates dreamed that a beautiful woman ap- 
proached him and said, " Three days hence you will reach fertile 
Phthia," and Socrates's almost last words, " Catch me, if you can. 5> 
These are the merest fragments from Plato, but sufficient in their 
amplified form to justify faith in immortality. 

With the faith of Plato there was mingled some doubt, which is 
another weakness of a purely philosophic religion. In the Phcedo the 
parties to the dialogue appear dissatisfied with Socrates's argument for 
immortality, from the fact that the soul has pre-existed, and Socrates 
does not remove the doubt. Again, the analogy between a weaver's 
garments and the weaver existing long after they have perished, and 
the soul existing long after the body has rotted, Socrates himself ac- 
knowledges inconclusive ; and yet Plato is decidedly committed to the 
doctrine of immortality. The tenth book of his Laws carries one far 
toward a convincing and intelligent faith in the doctrine. Without 
such a doctrine there is no room for any eschatology ; one falls with 
the other, it is the other. 

Plato introduces the subject of future rewards and punishments in 
the Phcedo by saying, " I entertain a good hope that something awaits 
those who die, and that, as was said long since, it will be far better 
for the good than the evil." On future rewards he is not altogether 
definite, saying he hopes "to go amongst good men, though I would 
not positively assert it ; that, however, I shall go amongst gods, who 
are perfectly good masters, be assured I can positively assert this, if 
I can any thing of the kind." Concerning future retributions, he is 
decisive ; he writes like a divine judge, holding them over the guilty 
as the penalty of crime, and threatening them for inferiority, base^ 
ness, ignorance, and stupidity. Plato borrows the doctrine of trans- 
migration from Pythagoras, and incorporates it with his eschatology. 
He speaks of Hades and the invisible world, but has a preference for 
transmigration ; and in the Phcedo he writes of transmigrated souls 
loving impurity while in the flesh, wandering like shadowy phantoms 
"amongst monuments and tombs," and others, who had given them- 
selves to "gluttony and drinking," are spoken of as " clothed in the 
form of asses and brutes." Both in the Phcedrus and Thecetetus the 
doctrine of transmigration is clearly announced, somewhat in detail, 
as a soul passes into the life of a beast, a man passes into a man 
again, or into the nature of woman ; and in any event, whatever the 
extremely wicked soul's lot is, in beast or man, it remains with wings 
cut off for ten thousand years, and can have no hope of improvement 
until the expiration of that period. Others, less wicked and with 



SPIRITUALISM-P URGA TOR Y. 55 

more aspiration, may escape the imprisonment at the end of three thou- 
sand or even one thousand years. In the Laws he insists that the wicked 
after death "shall come back hither to suffer punishment according to 
nature," going into animals or men, as they were beastly and depraved. 

Accepting transmigration as a form of retribution, Plato logically 
veered toward a most pernicious doctrine, which, considerably modified 
or expanded in these days, passes by the name of spiritualism. He 
did not formulate Spiritualism, but its germ is in Transmigration, 
and in more than one instance Plato relates spiritualistic phenomena. 
In the Second Epistle he declares that the dead perceive what is going 
on here, and in the Seventh Epistle he teaches that the unjust after 
death rove upon the earth and get into animals and persons. In the 
Eighth Epistle he speaks the speech of the departed Dion, as if in- 
spired by him to speak it ; and the dialogue entitled Menexenus is 
virtually a proclamation of Spiritualism. The seed of the modern de- 
lusion is in the Platonic system. 

In addition to transmigration Plato refers to the judgment of the 
departed, especially in the Gorgias, before Minos, Rhadamanthus, and 
iEacus, who sentence the good to the " isles of the blessed," and the 
wicked to Tartarus ; and in the PJwedo he relates the old fable of the 
four rivers on the earth, among them the River Styx, and alludes to 
lakes and Tartarus as the abode of the incurably wicked. Of those 
whose wickedness is curable deliverance from Tartarus may be ex- 
pected. This is the purgatory of Plato, the seed of the Catholic doc- 
trine, and the germ of the " second-probation " idea mooted in certain 
quarters in these days. Transmigration and Tartarus — these are the 
sign-words of the eschatology of Plato. 

In view of the future Plato exhorts in the Gorgias to holy living 
while on the earth with an emphasis, a persuasion, an enthusiasm 
equal to any thing the pulpit ever uttered, and not less earnest is he 
in the Phozdo in urging an immediate care of the soul. The doctrine 
that the future life will be determined by the life here is also an- 
nounced in the Republic. Plato was a great preacher, an exhorter to 
righteousness, as necessary to a happy future. 

To what a banquet of religious ideas Plato invites us ! Provi- 
dence, sacrifices, prayers, worships, holiness, spiritual influence, im- 
mortality — there is inspiration in these, the trend thereof is upward ; 
transmigration, spiritualism, purgatory, second probation, Tartarus — 
these are the attenuated extremes of philosophical dreaming, a mix- 
ture of fable, superstition, and invention, to be banished both from 
religion and philosophy. The ethical system of Plato, in its concep- 
tions, provisions, and suggestions, is a combination of truth and error ; 
the religious system is akin to it. 



56 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Plato's socialism, or the governmental idea, is as distinct and well 
articulated as his psychology and religion, and as it is referred to 
oftener than either, it deserves more than a passing notice. Full 
credit has not been given to all his teachings on a subject of 
such vast importance ; he has been censured because misunderstood, 
and not condemned sufficiently when understood. This department 
of his philosophy, unlike all others, is eminently practical; it is a 
reduction of the abstract to the concrete, or an application of 
principles to common life ; it is the framework of a new system of 
sociology. He rises high enough to say in the First Alcibiades that 
States possessing virtue do not need walls, ships, and docks, a senti- 
ment almost parallel with that more ancient one, that " righteous- 
ness exalte th a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." Sim- 
ilar is his utterance in the Laws, that virtue should be the end of 
law; and emphatic is his opposition to foreign war, and that more 
deadly internal contagion— sedition. Order, harmony, obedience to 
law, philosophical truth, education, and virtue he considers essential 
to good government, subordinating every thing to their attainment. 
Such is his notion of the importance of the State that he exalts it 
above individual right, regulating human liberty, personal aims and 
ambitions, and all things belonging to the individual, in the interest 
of the government, submerging individualism in the governmental 
purpose. He says in the Laws, ' ' Neither yourselves are your own 
property, nor this substance of yours," but yourselves, substance and 
families belong to the State. Paul echoes Plato's sentiment so far as 
to say, " Ye are not your own," but he differs in placing the owner's 
life of man not in the State, but in God. God owns every man ; the 
State owns nobody. This is the difference between them, a difference 
that will strikingly manifest itself in the elucidation of socialistic phil- 
osophy and Christianity, for it is the key-note of both. 

Plato's Republic is interpreted as an ideal State, in contrast with 
the then existing government of Athens, which the philosopher con- 
cevied to be corrupt, and which he thoroughly hated. Discovering 
the weaknesses of popular government, whether as a tyranny or de- 
mocracy, he assigned himself the task of framing a government which 
should embody the best political conceptions, and be a model to the 
nations after him. The Republic was accordingly written, ostensibly 
as an ideal conception, but as a covert rebuke of the prevailing city 
government. Later in life the Laws appeared, as a supplemental de- 
velopment of the Republic. The Republic is ideal ; the Laws are 
concrete, practical. The one deals in moral principles ; the other in 
legal forms and penalties. The one is the constitution ; the other 
the statute-book. To these we must look for principles, laws, 



POLITICAL GOVERNMENT. 57 

and expositions of the governmental idea, which in Plato is a singu- 
lar conglomeration of ethical virtues and social aberrations, a mix- 
ture of health and disease in the body politic. 

Of first importance is the form of political government. He 
enumerates in the Statesman three definite polities — monarchy, aris- 
tocracy, and democracy — out of which, bisecting, he produces six ; 
but, whatever the bisected form, he leans in his preferences toward 
monarchy " as the best of the six polities." The same preference is 
expressed in his Fifth Epistle, in which he says : ' ' There is a voice 
from each form of polity, as it were from certain animals, one from 
a democracy, another from an oligarchy, and another again from a 
monarchy. Very many persons assert that they understand these 
voices ; but except a few, they are very far from understanding 
them." The "voice" of the monarchy is pleasant in his ears. 
" There are," he says in the Laws, " two mothers of polities," from 
which all others are produced, monarchy and democracy ; but he 
criticises the extreme form of each, adding that a mixture of both 
forms is preferable. Notwithstanding this advocacy of a milder mon- 
archy than appears in the Statesman and Republic, certain it is his 
leanings were toward a high-toned government, either as an aris- 
tocracy or monarchy ; for it was his repudiation of democracy in 
Athens, and the indorsement of the reign of the Tyrants, that made 
him unpopular and compelled his exile. 

It is in the Republic that, quoting an old fable, he intimates that 
in the forming of men the Deity mixed gold with some, fitting them 
for governors : silver with others, intending them to be soldiers ; iron 
and brass with others, designing them to be craftsmen and husband- 
men. This is a square affirmation of the natural inequality of men, 
on which is predicated the righteousness of caste, which Plato empha- 
sized with earnestness, and introduced into the ideal State. The 
higher and the lower must be recognized in humanity ; society must 
be organized, not on the unities or resemblances even, but on the 
differences in men. Inequality in a sense is admitted, but in Plato's 
sense it is the essence of inextinguishable social dissonance, the fixing 
of permanent barriers or walls of partition, that ought to be broken 
down. In the Menexenus, relaxing the caste spirit, Plato espouses the 
thought of equality in a masterly manner, affirming that all are born 
as brethren, having "one mother," and that they are "neither the 
slaves nor the lords of each other." But he was in a tender mood while 
writing this humane sentiment, for he was thinking of the dead, and 
the shadow of the sepulcher was upon him. The grave always hal- 
lows the doctrine of equality. He is in another mood while fram- 
ing laws. 



58 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Holding to caste, it is not surprising that he excludes diseased 
men from his ideal State ; he insists that they ought to die. Chris- 
tianity would introduce the physician, the nurse, the hospital, the 
asylum, but none of these auxiliaries to human comfort are wanted 
in his republic. Herodicus he censures for propping himself with 
drugs, lengthening out his life, and procuring a lingering death. 
Healthy men, who die of extreme old age, are wanted in his repub- 
lic. This offends the sympathetic spirit in man, paralyzes philan- 
thropy, suppresses aspiration, and strikes at a majority of man- 
kind. The doctrine is as odious as it is un fraternal, and pernicious 
as it is unkind. 

Neither aristocracy nor caste is the worst feature in the socialism of 
Plato ; neither constitutes the esprit de corps of socialism. Both, however, 
are preparatory steps to it. Plato locates the ideal republic outside 
of Athens, in a beautiful country, with a single city at its center, the 
whole being walled, and safe from attack, both from without and within. 
The number of families within the walls must not exceed five thou- 
sand and forty, all of whom shall be loyal to the governmental pur- 
pose, and in sympathy with ideal ends. In view of death and 
immigration, the exact number of families may be difficult to pre- 
serve, but it must be attempted at all hazards, as Plato considers a 
small republic more likely to fulfill its mission than a large one. In 
this protected city certain governmental conditions, primary to all 
governments, must be observed ; as the conditions of suffrage, the 
tenure of office-holding, the number of offices, the duties of officers, 
which Plato enumerates with appropriate circumstantiality. As the 
subject of foreign relations can not be ignored, since other nations 
exist, and some are contiguous, Plato establishes laws relating to 
naturalization, and the surceasing of citizenship, and enacts free trade 
in extenso by forbidding the payment of* duty on imports and exports; 
that is, no revenue whatever shall be obtained from international 
trade. 

Touching internal social relations, the core of the socialistic spirit, 
he advocates compulsory marriage for the sake of the immortality of 
the race, a not inconsequential consideration ; but in the ideal society 
marriage is abandoned for the good of the State. What is called 
free-loveism in these days supersedes the sacred idea of marriage ; 
home is blotted out ; parental and filial relations are unknown ; 
children are foundlings, handed over to the care of the State ; and 
the family perishes. Plato quotes the communism of birds and ani-. 
mals, as chaste and safe, in defense of the idea as applied to human 
society, and insists that it will result in the procreation of a higher 
generation of men and women. 



PLATO ESTIMATED. 59 

The advocacy of the communism of property naturally follows. 
The assignment of land to the individual is by the government, for 
the sake of the government ; title to land is not acquired ; shares in 
profits are forbidden; each lives, labors, suffers, and dies for the 
whole. Abnegation of proprietary rights is the imperative condition 
of mutual support and general prosperity. Without further elucida- 
tion, this is Plato's social idealism. Among its best elements, it in- 
cludes order, education, virtue ; on the other side are state-ownership, 
monarchy, caste, free trade, community of women, and community 
of property. Both elements can not co-exist; education and caste 
are antagonistic, virtue and extinct homes do not abide together. 
The socialism of Plato means the dismemberment of society ; the ideal 
State means the degradation of man. 

In Athens his governmental ideas were never enforced ; in Sicily 
he undertook a reformation of the government, but failed. 

Having considered Plato's philosophy in its details, it remains to 
consider his relation to philosophy in general, or to estimate Plato's 
place in history and his services to mankind. What is permanent in 
Plato and what transient, what superior or imperishable, and what 
inferior or evanescent, whether he was born for his age or all ages ; 
this is an inquiry that can not be omitted. Without controversy, he 
was abundant in labor, and lived to propagate ideas that are funda- 
mental, and which have entered into the philosophies and religions 
of the world. To understand these ideas, it is not absolutely neces- 
sary to understand the times in which he lived, or the philosophies 
that prevailed, or the religions that held sway over the common mind, 
for they are not the product of his age, but belong to all ages. Other 
ideas, not fundamental or universal, take their coloring from his age, 
and belong to it. To understand these the age must be understood. 
That is to say, what is accidental, inferior, evanescent, in Plato, is the 
result of the influence of the age on Plato ; what is permanent and im- 
perishable is outside of that influence. In many respects he stood out 
from his age, because he stood against it and condemned it. 

As a man, he had his weaknesses ; he lacked the fortitude with 
which he clothes the ideal man ; he authorized the worship of the 
gods without having a personal faith in them ; he was aristocratic in 
instinct ; he hated democracy ; he retired from public affairs, and 
virtually abjured his citizenship. 

His philosophy is burdened with weaknesses, plain and palpable ; 
its effects in some directions have been injurious, undermining the 
order of society ; its virtues are of definite value, and worthy of re- 
nown. To specify the varied results of Plato's career, we shall con- 
sider, first, Plato as a writer ; second, Plato as a philosopher ; third, 



60 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Plato as a moral teacher ; fourth, Plato as a socialist ; fifth, Plato as 
a forerunner of Christianity; sixth, the need of Christianity demon- 
strated by the Platonic system. 

As a writer, composer, and thinker, Plato had not an equal among 
his contemporaries, and it is doubtful if, since his day, any one has ap- 
peared who has excelled him in the art of composition. Both in 
the art of thinking and the art of expression he certainly is a model. 
For intensity of thought, subtlety of apprehension, sublimity of in- 
quiry, persistence in analysis, accuracy of dialectical statement, and 
elegance in representation, he is both superior and inspiring. It is 
not the dialogue form of discourse which he preferred that is com- 
mended, but the style itself, which is clear, definite, logical, illustra- 
tive, and conclusive. He wrote in Attic Greek, the language of 
Pericles and Demosthenes, itself a pure and finished language, a ve- 
hicle for sublime thoughts and inquiries. He was an earnest inquirer 
for truth, definitely expressing what he desired to know, if he failed 
in finding the knowledge itself. He asked questions — he was some- 
times slow to affirm until the foundations of an answer had been well 
laid in investigation and comparison. He does not write, therefore, 
in a positive and affirmative way, but as if searching for a path for 
his feet ; walking along, at times, as if his lantern had gone out, as 
it had. Besides the perspicuity, the elegance, and the logical strength 
of his compositions, there is a personal tone in every dialogue that 
wins the sympathy of the reader. He does not write as if building 
a system of truth for others, but as if in eager search for the truth 
for himself. He is not a revealer, he is a seeker, and writes accord- 
ingly. Understanding Plato's purpose, it is easy to understand his 
style. 

Lewes, always underrating Plato, pronounces him a " very diffi- 
cult and somewhat repulsive writer ; " and Jowett, so far as the 
Timceus is concerned, reiterates the criticism. To Plato, as a writer, 
the criticism does not apply ; it is crudely unjust. A paragraph now 
and then, as in the Phcedrus or Euthydemus, may be open to such 
objection, but what writer has not produced objectionable paragraphs ? 
Shakespeare is not exempt from such criticism. Not Plato's paragraphs, 
but Plato's works, must afford the basis for critical judgment; and 
on that basis the critics must be silent. Lewes likewise insinuates 
that Plato is indefinite, confirming his report by the statement of 
Cicero that he leaves many questions undetermined. No one disputes 
that many discussions in Plato are inconclusive, that he does not an- 
swer serious inquiries, as that concerning holiness ; but Plato failed 
on such subjects because he did not know the truth. He is incon- 
clusive, but not indefinite. He seeks, but, as Schleiermacher points 



PLATO THE WRITER. 61 

out, does not arrive at truth. When Diogenes Laertius reports that 
Plato is unintelligible to the ignorant, the statement can not be con- 
tradicted; but Kepler's astronomical researches, Bacon's scientific 
data, and Kant's rational criticisms, are even more unintelligible to 
the ignorant than Plato's cosmogony or ethics. 

It may be truly charged against Plato that he is an inconsistent 
writer, contradicting in one dialogue what he affirms in another, 
thereby confusing and unsettling the mind of the reader. The fol- 
lowing are examples : in the Meno he holds that virtue can not be 
taught, but in the Clitopho he expresses an opposite opinion ; in the 
Phcedo he proves the doctrine of reminiscence, but in the Statesman 
he speaks of ancestors who "had no recollection of former events," a 
virtual denial of pre-existence ; again, in the Statesman he both ad- 
vises and condemns written statutes and customs, leaving it undeter- 
mined which is better for the State ; in the Timceus he vindicates the 
freedom of the will, while in the Hippias Minor he appears like a 
fatalist. These, however, are examples of inconsistency in thinking, 
not contradictions in writing ; they are not blemishes of composition. 

The same answer may be made with respect to the charge that 
there is a want of method in Plato's literary work ; even if true, it 
does not apply to style of expression or composition ; if true, it ap- 
plies to Plato's conception of his work, not to its execution. Plato's 
literary thought is one thing, the literary execution is another. 
Moreover, as want of method, or absence of system, has been charged 
against his philosophy, it is possible that the critic has transferred the 
objection to the literary work of Plato; but whatever objection is 
made to his philosophy, or to his literary plans and methods, it does 
not apply to Plato as a writer. 

Singularly enough, Plato condemned writing, but only in a philo- 
sophical sense, saying that it is the "grave of thought," which 
Talleyrand metamorphosed into the form that language is employed 
by men for the purpose of concealing their ideas. Practically, Plato 
believed in writing ; he wrote — and died with pen in hand. 

We next estimate Plato as a philosopher. Compared with the 
philosophers of his own time, or from the time of Thales to that of 
Christ, there was none greater. None dealt with so many problems, 
and none elaborated more fully or saw so deeply into divine mysteries. 
Of the ancient philosophies, we must accept Plato's as superior to all 
others, whether we consider his theology, which was in advance of 
others ; or his cosmogony, which was clearer than any ; or his ethics, 
which, however defective, partook of the spirit of the times, and had 
been better had the public religion been different. In these particulars 
Plato, like Saul of old, is head and shoulders above the academicians. 



62 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

However, it is not so much with reference to the comparative 
value of his teachings in that day, as it is with reference to their 
value compared with modern philosophy, that his philosophy is now 
considered. Is Plato of any value now, or has he been superseded by 
philosophers who, in the light of discovery and Christianity, see 
farther and deeper into divine mysteries ? The death-knell of nearly 
all the old philosophies Christianity sounded, as soon as it was 
preached, and they were rolled up as a scroll, and laid away. Plato's 
for the time went the way of all the rest. Epicurus and Zeno — the 
philosophy of the porch — superseded that of the academy, showing 
that the rationalism of Plato had not changed the public faith, or 
rooted itself in civil affairs. Mythology reigned in Athens when 
Paul visited the city, and the Epicurean philosophy was in the 
ascendant. The Stoics Paul mentions ; of Plato he says nothing. 
Neoplatonism was the attempt to unite Christianity and Platonism, 
or Christ and Plato, but it failed. 

Until the sixteenth century of our era Plato is unknown as an 
intellectual force, his philosophy is without influence, idealism has 
perished. With the revival of letters, he rallies from the grave, and 
asks again to be heard, and is heard. Whatever is good in Plato, as 
well as whatever is evil, whether idealism or agnosticism, rationalism 
or materialism, theology or ethical science, is re-echoed in the circles 
of modern thinkers, modified, abbreviated, or amplified, as the thinkers 
prefer, but retaining the spirit of the old academy. Sometimes the 
Platonism in modern philosophy assumes a disguised appearance, but 
it is there, the core of modern philosophic thought, in one form 
or another. Nothing new has been announced by the peripatetics of 
the nineteenth century. Take idealism as the highest type of 
philosophy. Neither Hegel nor Kant, nor any philosopher of 
modern times, has improved on Plato, either in beauty or originality 
of idea, or clearness and fitness of expression. To be sure, the ideal- 
ism of Plato is not without blemish, but with all its weaknesses, it car- 
ries unaided human thought up to the heights of belief in a personal 
God, which is sufficient atonement for its mistakes. ■ Of modern ideal- 
ism, not so much can be said in its favor. Leibnitz is not as rational 
an idealist as Plato. Plato gives us a lofty idea of God. Kant tells 
us that, by the theoretical reason alone, God's existence can not be 
demonstrated ; Plato annuls the Kantian presumption by demonstrat- 
ing the existence of God. Plato may not have apprehended the two 
reasons as Kant discriminates them, but he saw the way to God 
through the total reason of the soul, and proclaimed him. In him 
the idea of God as a being of goodness, holiness, and immortality is 
expanded into beautiful proportions, proving that a rational philoso- 



ORIGINAL DISCOVERIES. 63 

pher may go farther than to conclude that there is a divine being ; 
he may declare his attributes. The Eleatics pronounced in favor of 
being, but it was left to Plato to distinguish between unchangeable 
being and changeable phenomena or non-being. Separating the two, 
Plato assigned to each a specific character ; the study of being leading 
him to the thought of the divine attributes, of providence, of govern- 
ment, and of the spiritual sphere; the study of non-being leading 
to the investigation of natural principles, and the relation of God 
and the universe. From the thought of God, Plato passed to an in- 
quiry respecting the soul, which he distinguished from the body, pro- 
nouncing it both spiritual and immortal. Plato was the first philosopher 
to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, as he was the first to demonstrate 
the existence of a personal God, or the Creator of the universe. 

As respects the Platonic cosmogony, what modern philosopher has 
excelled it? Some there are who, like Comte, have denied the evi- 
dence of design or final cause in nature, but Plato reduces the whole 
subject to this form: motion implies a mover; and all modern expres- 
sions, such as design implies a designer, and contrivance a contriver, 
are built upon the Platonic apothegm. Not half as mysterious as 
Heraclitus, with his theory of flux, which he illuminates and accepts, 
nor half as confusing as the moderns, with their theories of bioplasm 
and atomic revolutions, he reduces the primitive elements to four: 
earth, air, fire, and water, with which the Creator builds the uni- 
verse. The moderns talk of the convertibility of one thing into 
another, as heat into light and light into heat, a theory that Plato 
announced in the Timceus with as much clearness as it is now 
declared. 

The theory of evolution Plato anticipates in the Laws, and Sweden- 
borg found "contraries" and "similars," or the theory of corespond- 
ence, in the same volumes. In these particulars Plato is the original 
philosopher, the discoverer of first cosmological principles, which the 
moderns have appropriated and wrested to their destruction. Aristotle 
assailed the political opinions of Plato ; his ethical system we assail as 
thoroughly weak and inadequate; but his philosophical conceptions 
of God and the universe are almost invulnerable; as speculations, 
they are apparently divine. As respects philosophy itself, Plato 
divided it into dialectics, metaphysics, and ethics, a division com- 
prehending all the subjects which should engage the philosopher's 
attention. 

He was the first to make such a classification ; it is not clear that 
it has been improved by any subsequent attempt. It assigned special 
tasks and definite limits to the philosophical pursuit, having illustra- 
tion in Plato himself. 



64 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Prior to Plato, philosophy was without a language of its own; 
but it needs a language as much as chemistry or physiology, and he 
was the first to suggest a form of sound words, to which the ages 
have contributed their stock, and a philosophical language is the re- 
sult. In the Cratylus he discusses the propriety of names, answering 
that common question, what is in a name? He shows that the name 
must be the sign of the idea, that the name should have value, and 
that great truths must have proper expression. In this respect he is 
both a nominalist and a realist, believing in realities and in names 
suited to them. He is not a nominalist in the sense that there is 
nothing in a name, but that it represents value, or truth, or fact, in 
this way showing the importance of a philosophical language and 
laying the foundations for such a language. 

As a psychologist he was the first to announce the spirit of iden- 
tity and contradiction as a law of thought, than which a more im- 
portant discovery he did not make ; he also distinguished between 
sensation and perception, sensation and cognition, sensation and vo- 
lition, regarding sensation as an external preliminary to internal 
intellectual movement, but not as absolutely essential ; he distinguished, 
likewise, between analysis and synthesis as modes of investigation, 
employing both himself, but evidently preferring the former ; he dis- 
tinguished between the universal and the particular, the contingent 
and the necessary, applying these especially in cosmological and theo- 
logical discussions. The elder Mill was captivated by these classifica- 
tions, and Bacon was aided in scientific pursuit by observing them. 
He is a rational, in opposition to the empirical, psychologist. In this 
sense he is a rationalist: he believes in the dominion of the reason; 
he reasons, but the idea is the product of the reason. Hence, he is 
an ideologist. Psychology is the mother of ideology. Coleridge was 
inspired by the idealities of Plato, and Hegel became fanatical over 
them. From Plato, psychology, rationalism, and idealism emerged, 
as the necessary products of his system. 

Plato was a sincere investigator of truth. Sometimes spoken of as 
an "ironical philosopher," since he employed irony in the refutation of 
an error, one of his chief characteristics was the intense sincerity of 
his purpose to find the truth. With Plato, sophistry in reasoning 
ended. He brought the Sophists to a stand-still ; more, he annihilated 
the brood. He compelled seriousness in investigation, and made 
truth the object of investigation. He gave aim to philosophy. 
Earnest, sensitive to knowledge, acutely anxious for truth himself, he 
stimulated others to inquiry ; he excited thought, and then directed it 
into proper channels. Sincerity and stimulation are among the effects 
of Plato's teaching. 



DATA OF ETHICS. 65 

The philosophical Plato, whether studied as a theologian or cos- 
mologist, as a classifier of philosophy, as an originator of philo- 
sophical language, as a psychologist, or as a sincere and stimulating 
investigator, is reproducing himself in the philosophies of modern 
times, affecting the speculative spirit, and stimulating inquiry more 
than all the ancients combined. In him is the root of philosophical 
truth. Along with the truths he announced, half-truths and errors 
also made an appearance, and these also are bearing fruit in the 
speculative systems of the thinkers. Thus both the weakness and the 
strength of Plato have, shared the immortality which properly be- 
longs to truth alone. 

Next, his influence as an ethical teacher must be considered. 
His data of ethics are clearly insufficient for a system of ethics. He 
advocates the principles of justice, denounces the poets for their 
falsehoods, and forbids drunkenness in his republic ; but, notwithstand- 
ing the high ethical aim of some of his teachings, he holds to views 
that in their very nature prevent the attainment of good, and so the 
whole system falls to the ground. In a spirit of self-flattery, he con- 
cedes to man a voluntary love of good and a natural abhorrence of 
evil, and appoints education as the remedy for the world's evil. The 
unfitness of the remedy grows out of an ignorance of the disease. 
The disease is spiritual ; the remedy must be spiritual also, but Plato's 
is intellectual. It is as if a remedy for defective hearing were pre- 
scribed for defective eyes. Plato regarded vice as an intellectual 
aberration, and ignorance as the great disease, for the cure of which 
intellectual development is sufficient. 

Without discussing this further, and yet insisting that in any sys- 
tem of ethics the remedy must be proportioned to the disease, we are 
warranted in saying that Plato's voice is still heard in the modern 
systems of philosophic ethics. The remedy for evil is education. 
Herbert Spencer has not advanced beyond Plato in his ethical 
teaching. Spencer is in favor of scientific, in opposition to super- 
naturalistic, morality ; he advocates a rational, not a religious, basis, 
for ethics. Plato's scheme failed, and Spencer's is the stupendous 
failure of the nineteenth century. 

As a social teacher, or a socialist, Plato stands in a condemnatory 
attitude, having given birth to theories and proclaimed ideas which 
are re-appearing in the socialism, nihilism, and communism that now 
threaten the existence of public order, if not of society itself. All 
the dangerous social doctrines impregnating and agitating modern 
society are the echoes of the Platonic system, which, however, was 
ideal and never put into practice. One would scarcely believe that 
a philosopher like Plato would be found on the side of what is evi- 

5 



66 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

dently corrupting, disintegrating, and abhorrent ; but it is so. In 
the Republic he is the open advocate of a community of women, 
guarded by certain restrictions and established for ideal or philosophic 
ends. To these ends we call special attention. He holds that the 
guardians or rulers in his republic are the best men in it; physically 
they are without a blemish, having subjected themselves to hygienic 
discipline; intellectually, they are scholars, statesmen, philosophers, 
and represent the highest manhood. It is equally important that 
certain women, well-endowed and handsome, shall pass through the 
same preparatory experiences and discipline, becoming healthy, in- 
tellectual, and the fit associates for the best men. These two best 
classes he would throw together promiscuously for the procreation of 
the best children in the republic, securing a generation of noblest 
men and women, but at the expense of conjugal and filial relations. 
He would permit marriage between the upper classes/but not as a 
necessity, and, when a marriage has been celebrated, the children of 
such parents are not to know their parents, nor the parents the 
children. It is a community organized for the State, in which person- 
ality is undefined and relationship obscured. 

Now, the end may appear good, but the means are too expensive. 
It is the end that controls in the breeding of sporting dogs, birds, and 
horses, just as Plato cites ; and he would establish society upon a similar — 
that is, an animal — basis. The following facts we quote against it : 

1. In Europe royal families have confined marriages within their 
limits, or if the high contracting parties go outside, and a morganatic 
marriage is established, it is held in disrepute, and the royal descend- 
ant suffers disinheritance and social penalty. What has been the 
consequence ? Are the children of kings any better than others ? 
Lunacy and imbecility, the dreadful fruits of violated consanguinity 
and intemperance and crime, make up a not inconsiderable portion 
of the history of royal families, overthrowing the royal principle of 
Plato, which, carried out in its details as he has prescribed, is only 
another name for free-loveism. 

2. As a matter of fact, the best men and women may be found 
outside the royal lines. Reformers, poets, philosophers, physicians, 
theologians, and statesmen, eminent and useful, have emerged from 
poverty, obscurity, and degradation. Often the jewel is found in a 
pig-sty. God lifts one from the dunghill to the throne. In the 
round-about way of marriage between lower and higher classes the 
world's gradual elevation will be secured ; if at times the blood of the 
best is vitiated by this method, the blood of the base is purified. Al- 
ready the signs of a race-improvement are visible ; it is a historic fact 
that the man of the nineteenth century is in advance of the man of 



PLATONIC SOCIALISM. 67 

the first century. Ours is not a race of prize-fighters or Olympic run- 
ners, but in longevity, beauty of form, health, physical skill, and all 
the essentials of physical nobleness, the race is far in advance of what 
it was in Plato's time ; and this improvement and prophecy of still 
larger development is the result of evolution, through the intermin- 
gling and wedding of all classes, rather than their separation. Plato's 
plan must result in the fixed division of the race into upper and lower 
classes, the best and the worst, with no hope of advance for the latter, 
but rather a continuous decline, while the providential, historically 
working plan is resulting. in the perceptible elevation of the whole race. 
Plato was legislating for the few ; God has his eye upon all. 

Besides the unwisdom of Plato's plan — a plan that must fail in 
itself — what mischief has it wrought in modern society ! With the 
revival of interest in Plato all his theories, socialistic as well as phil- 
osophical, were reannounced and found supporters, to the discredit 
of the age in which they lived. 

The laxity of the marriage bond in civilized states ; the reign of 
the doctrine of ' ' Platonic affinity " in higher circles ; the relation of 
spiritualism and free-loveism in this country ; the multiplication 
of divorces and the assaults upon the home — are directly or indirectly 
the offspring of the Platonic philosophy. It strikes, therefore, at the 
foundations of society ; it impairs faith in the most sacred relations, 
and turns the family into a nest of harlots ; it abrogates the social 
tie, and converts government into anarchy. Besides these direful re- 
sults, it is the parent of those socialistic theories which are endan- 
gering social order and mocking civil law throughout the world. 
Carried out to its full extent, socialism will subvert human society. 
It is not believed that Plato contemplated such far-reaching and rev- 
olutionary catastrophes, but they logically follow his teachings, and 
are already actualized in organized attempts against society. A com- 
munity of goods, or communism, nihilism, socialism, and a community 
of women, or abrogation of the family idea, Plato advocated with not 
a little conviction and enthusiasm ; but in all fairness it must be ad- 
mitted that he estimated the theories he advocated as purely philo- 
sophical, and never attempted to organize a society with these theories 
as a basis. The modern socialist is not a philosopher, but the admin- 
istrator of the philosophical idea, which reduces him to a destruction- 
ist, who goes forth with dynamite or the dagger to execute the plan 
and reorganize society. Socialism as a philosophical idea is absurd, 
and, put into practical operation, it is ruinous to both the family and 
the state. As the exponent of the idea, Plato must be condemned. 

The task is not unpleasant to estimate Plato in his relations to 
Christianity ; that is, to ask and attempt to answer the question, 



68 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

What were his services to religion, and did he to any degree prepare 
the way for the introduction of Christianity to the East ? Too much 
must not be allowed to philosophy in general or to Plato in particu- 
lar ; but, on the other hand, the preliminary work of each should be 
recognized, and the points of union and departure, or resemblance 
and dissimilarity, between philosophy and Christianity should be de- 
clared. The advent of the divine religion was preceded by a long- 
continued series of preparation — religious, philosophical, moral, and 
political preparations — without which its appearance would have been 
attended with withering resistances and retrograding revolutions. An 
example of precedent steps to the sway of the Gospel India furnishes 
in her long history. First, Brahminism looms large, spreading all 
over the land, and ruling with exclusive authority ; then Buddhism 
protests and stalks like a reformer from the mountains to the sea ; 
then Mohammedanism penetrates the two colossal creeds, dividing 
again the thinking of the people ; then Christianity shoots a solitary 
ray across the religious horizon, and India wonders and pauses ; then 
the English occupation involves the old faiths in restraint ; then the 
universities of India beget in thousands of young men a doubt of the 
old religion ; then Rationalism invades the land, and superstition 
trembles ; then Protestantism plants churches, and echoes Calvary in 
the ears of the millions; then Chunder Sen preaches Christ, and 
mysticism takes the place of tradition ; and at last India opens her 
gates to the dawn of the Gospel day. A slow process, involving cen- 
turies of time and the burdens of ages, but it illustrates the prepara- 
tion needed for the admission and appreciation of Gospel truth. In 
like manner philosophy, in its manifold phases, had something to do 
in preparing the public mind for the new religion ; it was related to 
the religious idea, and portended its development. Paganism, cor- 
rupt and insufficient, was a religious idea, and as such demonstrated 
the necessity of another religion, in which the idea might have com- 
plete development. Philosophy, weak, anxious, and helpless, made 
the same demonstration ; it was the prophecy of religion. If Plato's 
voice is still ringing in the socialism of modern times ; if his ethical 
system has been reproduced in Herbert Spencer ; if his rationalism 
reappears in modern idealism — surely the whole philosophy of Plato 
must have had a potent influence in his day in preparing the people 
for a religion higher than his philosophy, and infinitely better than 
paganism. 

The specific work of philosophy as a service to or preparation for 
Christianity may be indicated as follows : 

1. The undermining of faith in mythology was the sign of the 
reign of reason in religion. The fable withered under the exegetical 



SERVICES OF PHILOSOPHY. 69 

analysis of the academy. The gods of Plato are the gods of tradition, 
not the gods of the reason. Plato says he had a ' ' searching spirit " 
which prompted him to inquire into the reasonableness of the popular 
religion, which he secretly rejected. Philosophy broke with mythol- 
ogy — this was a step toward religious freedom and the annihilation 
of error. 

2. The monotheism of Plato was an antecedent sign of the mono- 
theism of Christianity. The origin of philosophic monotheism is to 
many a mystery, inasmuch as theology has insisted that the theistic 
hypothesis can not be a product of the reason, but must be a matter 
of revelation. Richard Watson holds that the ground of revelation 
is the inability of the human intellect to discover God in his charac- 
ter and relations ; but the theological basis is no longer tenable. The 
facts are against it. The power of the reason in concluding for the 
existence of God, and in apprehending him in part, is exemplified in 
the monotheism of Plato ; either this must be allowed or Plato was 
inspired. To make known the will, purposes, and plans of God, a 
revelation is a necessity. Plato announces the existence of God, as- 
sociating certain necessary attributes as belonging to him ; but he 
does not unfold divine plans, though he hints their existence. These 
plans the Scriptures unfold ; to a Scriptural revelation Plato un- 
doubtedly pointed. 

3. Respecting man, Plato taught his immortality and the doctrine 
of responsibility, which involved the two-fold idea of future rewards 
and retributions. Obscure and even repulsive as is his eschatology, it 
has its value as a prefigurement of the clearer and more rational 
eschatology of the New Testament. The eschatological idea of Plato 
is the antecedent sign of the eschatological details of Christianity. 

4. The incompleteness of the Platonic system, the essential emas- 
culation of philosophy, was an indirect demonstration of the necessity 
of religious truth as a substitute for speculation ; in this respect it ren- 
dered unintended service to Christianity, and prepared the public mind 
to receive it. Had Plato taught all that Christ taught, or anticipated 
every truth of the Gospel, what need of the Master ? It was because his 
pen lagged, his reason faltered, his eye grew dim, and error appeared 
like truth, that the divine teacher must appear and reveal the truth. 
Plato was the morning-star ; Christ the noonday sun. Plato was the 
forerunner of Christ ; philosophy was the preparation for Christian- 
ity. With its defects it had virtues: with its falsehoods, celestial 
truths ; with its aberrations, it was a steady, rational blaze ; with its 
puerilities, it had enduring substance; walking with the staff of 
reason, it climbed the stairway to the stars. Christianity, beginning 
with the stars, ascended to the eternal throne. 



70 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

The total impression that Plato makes is that of an appointed inquirer 
for truth, a searcher of the deep things of God. In all the wander- 
ings, questionings, and conclusions of Plato, embracing all the prob- 
lems of being and non-being, with their innumerable relations, he 
exhibits the humble, patient, and teachable spirit of a truth-seeker. 
Nowhere does he assume to be a final teacher ; at no time does he 
offer his philosophy as the panacea for the world's angry ills ; never 
does he pronounce the limit reached. Beyond the philosopher, be- 
yond the rationalism, the idealism, the ethical system, the eschatology 
of the academician, must the world go ; and upon another system of 
thought, even the truth, as it is in Jesus, must the heart of man lean 
for comfort in sorrow, knowledge in ignorance, light in darkness. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE CORNER=STONES OK 1 PHILOSOPHY. 

EMPEDOCLES, a disciple of Pythagoras, and an apologist of the 
doctrine of transmigration, delighted in declaring that, before 
becoming a man, he had been a boy, a girl, a bird, a fish, and a 
shrub, and that he had a complete remembrance of all his pre- 
existent experiences. 

Viewed in its historical stages and connections, philosophy furnishes 
a transparent illustration of the Pythagorean doctrine, for it has passed 
through many transformations, and is undergoing at the present time 
a many-phased development. In its vibrations between empiricism 
and idealism, materialism and theism, it presents a variety of forms 
and beliefs, theories and interpretations, without, however, conducting 
to well-settled conclusions, or to the decision of questions in which the 
race has been, is, and ever will be permanently interested. Now and 
then a philosophical suggestion, as the idealism of Hegel, has risen 
like an island out of the sea of thought around it and attracted atten- 
tion; while other ideas, like islands in the Pacific Ocean, have, from 
internal weaknesses, disappeared from sight. Belonging to these ex- 
tinct philosophies, however, there were truths, discovered by the 
patient inquiry of genius, that were transferred to later and more 
vital economies, the perpetuity of which will be determined by the 
excess of truth over error they contain. For twenty-five centuries, 
this coming and going of philosophical ideas, this rising and falling 



A DAY-BREAKING EPOCH. 71 

of philosophical systems, this questioning and answering, only to be 
repeated by succeeding generations, has been a marked fact in human 
progress, and a proof of the instability of finite, and, consequently, 
imperfect thought. 

To trace the births and deaths of philosophies, to ascend the 
heights and sink into the depths of the mysteries of speculative 
^research, we deem necessary, since a knowledge of the attempts of 
philosophy will prepare us to understand both the approximate truth 
in it and the causes of its decline, to comprehend both its purpose 
and the failure of its realization. The task before us is not small, for 
in order to understand one system we must have a knowledge of all, 
and to comprehend the whole we must analyze its several parts. 
Like all things in human history, philosophy had its birthday, its 
birthplace; it had an individual character, and also a prophetic des- 
tiny. To Judea belongs the supreme honor of introducing, framing, 
and postulating a permanent religion ; from Rome emerge in perma- 
nent form the principles of jurisprudence ; the first alphabetic language 
acknowledges its paternity in the Phoenician mind ; but none of these 
gave to the world the first system of philosophy. We say system, for 
long before a systematic philosophy appeared, there were in existence 
adumbrations of doctrines and ideas, the germs of philosophical thought, 
just as before the Christian religion was developed there were relig- 
ious ideas in the world, and as before Roman law was enacted there 
were laws in human society, and as before a Phoenician alphabet was 
constructed there were spoken languages among men. Our search is 
not for adumbrations or germs, but systems, the formulated expression 
of consecutive inquiry, with definitely uttered beliefs, and integral 
and tangible results. 

In the south of Europe is a small country, with sides indented by 
gulfs and bays, with its southern shore washed by a sea, with its in- 
terior partly punctuated by mountain peaks and partly flattened 
into plains, a country of classical renown and historic fame. To the 
student Greece is known as the birthplace of philosophy. Twenty-five 
hundred years ago, amid the roar of the echoing sea, and, perhaps, 
as an indigenous product of sea, sky, air, rock, mountain, and plain, 
the first genuine philosophic system was declared, from which, not 
in a regular, synthetic series, have all future systems sprung, but 
which was the beginning of all that followed. However far beyond 
the crude, insufficient, and materialistic inquiry of that period the 
world may have gone, and whatever were the originating influences 
of the philosophic impulse, certain it is that, going back six cen- 
turies before Christ among the Hellenes, we reach a day-breaking epoch 
in the history of the race. Original questions were then asked in a 



72 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

sincere philosophic form, and original answers were returned in an 
equally sincere philosophic manner. Hellenic philosophy was orig- 
inal philosophy, the birth-form of the philosophic idea, the visible 
setting up of an interrogation point on the highway of thought, the 
first exclamation of philosophic formalism. Brucker's attempt to find 
a primitive philosophic people before the Deluge is a failure. The 
Grecian mind is the exponent of philosophic inquiry. 

In our inspection or analysis of these actual philosophies, the study 
of which can not fail to evoke special interest, we shall not find sys- 
tems essentially complete, or in all cases exactly rational, for in its 
experimental or rudimentary stages, philosophy assumed singular and 
even grotesque forms, often declaring for axiomatic doctrines state- 
ments that afterward were abandoned. Nor were the Hellenic sys- 
tems of philosophy, however distinct enough in their enunciations, 
related to one another by sympathetic bonds; that is, one was not 
necessarily the forerunner of another. They were not genealogical 
systems like father and son, the disciple sometimes projecting a phi- 
losophy from the standpoint of the teacher, as Parmenides developed 
the Eleaticism of Zenophanes, but sometimes it happened that the 
disciple rejected the system of his master, as Aristotle was charged 
with repudiating Platonism. The pre-Socratic schools did not follow 
in regular order, but several rose simultaneously, the dividing line 
often being indistinct. A walk from Thales to Aristotle, or from 
Zeno's porch to Plato's academy is not the making of perpendicular 
steps up a mountain side, getting nearer the summit with every step, 
but rather like a winding trail around the slope, now evidently mak- 
ing a forward movement, then descending toward the bottom again ; 
now rising into the clear atmosphere that plays about great heights, 
then sinking into the shadows of cave-like crevices or dull forests ; 
now seeing the philosopher on a run toward the top, then turning 
and gliding downward toward the abysses. 

Simplicity characterizes the earliest betrayal of the philosophic 
spirit. There are no profound generalizations, no laborious gathering 
of facts from which inductive results issue ; the philosophy is simple, 
based on one idea, or fact, or principle, instead of being an aggregation 
or combination of ideas and principles, distinguishing itself very 
markedly in this respect from the complex systems of Kant, Hegel, 
and Hamilton. However, complexity in philosophy is not a bad 
sign — it is the sign of an advance, that the shell is broken, and flight 
has commenced. The naive simplicities, the one-idea systems of the 
Ionic philosophers, are a mark of childhood, a beginning, a promise 
of something to come. 

The first philosophic inquiries were grounded in an attentive ob- 



SIMPLE PHILOSOPHIC INQUIRIES. 73 

servation of the facts and forms of nature, or the activities, conditions, 
envelopments, and developments of the physical world. The external 
was the range of observation ; the objective, therefore, constituted the 
limitation of speculative analysis. Without doubt, climate, geograph- 
ical environment, nature in form and force, subtly affects a people, 
tinging their civilization, influencing customs, institutions, literature, 
government, and religion. Buckle carries this to an extreme when 
he intimates that nature dictates the essentials of civilization, and 
that governments and religions are the products of physical suggestion 
and have no independent source. Evidently, however, the climatic 
or physical influence was felt more in earlier times than it is now in 
all the spheres of life ; man was in greater bondage to the elements, 
to the laws and changes of the physical world, than he is now. Not 
yet entirely free from natural influence, it is patent that, as he rises 
in the scale of intelligence, he subordinates nature to his will, and 
thinks independently of her presence. Theories, philosophies, and 
religions, grounded solely in the phenomena of nature, or the result 
of physical dictation, must be wanting in intellectual independence 
and spiritual tone. Logically, the first thinking of man would con- 
cern external things ; his problems would be physical problems ; his- 
torically, we find the first thinking was external, the first problems 
were physical. Philosophy is first external, afterward internal ; first 
material or physical, second intellectual or metaphysical. Materialism 
is the first product of philosophic thought, to be superseded by some- 
thing different as the reflective faculties are opened and employed, 
and philosophic inquiry becomes subjective or internal. Materialism 
is infantile, the sign of childhood philosophy, a, beginning ; internal 
thought is robust, the sign of intellectual emancipation, the forerun- 
ner of the culmination of philosophic inquiry. This distinction is 
true, as applied to modern as well as ancient philosophy. Modern 
materialism may be labeled childish quite as appropriately as Ionic 
philosophy, for the former has advanced in its logical conclusion not 
one cubit beyond the latter. 

The naturalness of Ionic materialism, arising from climatic environ- 
ment and the tendency of inquiry into external facts, is clearly demon- 
strated. We can not expect from the Grecian mind, in its incipient 
strugglings with original problems, any thing except raw materialism, 
a philosophy with a physical basis, a thinking grounded in empiri- 
cism, with corresponding implied negations of higher theological truth. 
Original philosophy is a climatic, geographical, sea-born, sky-infected, 
mountain-tinged, speculative hypothesis ; a philosophy, not the result 
of comparison, analysis, reason, but of the sight of the eyes, taking 
its color from the hues of the external world. An external, not an 



74 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

internal philosophy, it is ; a sense-philosophy, not a reason-philosophy; 
a material, not an intellectual, philosophy. If we pronounce it the 
lowest grade of thought, a rudiment, it is because it begins in earthi. 
ness and settles in the supposed realities of natural phenomena. 

In order easily to comprehend the course of philosophy, and to 
avoid burdening the mind with a too minute classification of its varied 
forms, or indulging in manifold divisions and subdivisions, it may be 
divided into epochs or cycles, as follows: 

I. The Ancient or Hellenic Epoch, beginning with Thales, and 
ending with the new academy. While some of the early philosophers 
were not born in Greece, among the number Thales himself, it is be- 
lieved the generic title of the epoch will be received as sufficiently 
accurate and inclusive of all the sects and schools that arose in Europe 
and the islands in the vicinity of Greece prior to the Christian era. 
During this epoch philosophy appeared in the phases of materialism, 
idealism, empiricism, and skepticism, four marked and decisive devel- 
opments that have their counterparts in the modern systems of spec- 
ulative thought. 

Justifiably, and according to custom, we exclude from consider 
tion the mythologies and religions of the Roman Empire and the 
Eastern World, since in no true sense were they philosophies. Ram 
Chandra Bose, of India, will challenge this statement, but Hindu 
metaphysics are without recognition. Not even Grecian mythology 
is accorded a place in the history of Grecian philosophy. The Hindu 
religions, with their philosophical adumbrations, may be properly an- 
alyzed and studied as religions; so mythologies, as such, may be 
investigated and estimated. Philosophy, pure and distinct, neither 
mythology nor religion, interwoven with philosophy, is the object of 
this chapter. 

For other reasons we exclude from historical consideration the 
uprising of Roman philosophy, which was legitimate enough in its 
sphere, and exercised a powerful effect on the public mind, under- 
mining the public religion and aiding the introduction of Christianity 
into the empire. The Romans were borrowers; the poets, 
dramatic writers, historians, mathematicians, scientists, rhetoricians, 
sculptors and philosophers, were indebted to the Greeks for models, 
ideas, plans, plots, systems — every thing in the literary sense. No 
original philosophy emerges from Roman history. What we find is 
a duplication of Grecian thought, with little variation and no 
advanced suggestions. Lucretius, like Epicurus, denied immortality, 
and was a pantheist in his conception of nature. Even Cicero was in 
doubt as to the immortality of the soul, and regarded God as the 
soul of the world. A devout admirer of Plato, he should have 



THE IONIC SECT. 75 

accepted immortality and God as fundamental truths. Seneca is 
noted as the ethical Koman philosopher, but is not in advance of 
Socrates. Epictetus honored the conscience and taught the virtue of 
suicide; but this was not an improvement on Zeno, the Stoic. M. 
Aurelius Antoninus insisted on the purity of the conscience; Max- 
imus Tyrius inclined to Platonism ; Galen was an Empiricist, attribut- 
ing knowledge to experience. 

In none of the Koman philosophers is there an original philosophic 
suggestion beyond what grew out of the Grecian systems. Separate 
recognition of their labors is, therefore, unnecessary. 

II. The Interregnum, or Middle Epoch, a period of philosophic 
quietism, disturbed only by the appearance of Neo-Platonism, and 
still later by the suicidal theories of Scholasticism. 

III. The Modern Epoch, embracing European, English, and 
American endeavors in the fields of inquiry. 

As has been intimated, the Ionic sect of philosophers, headed by 
Thales, was the first to grapple with the problem of causality, 
applying the principle to nature in the belief that it was either self- 
caused or that one element or force of nature was the primal cause 
of all that exists. It is scarcely in point to introduce the theology 
of the Ionics who, believing in a self-centered, personal, eternal, 
infinite and absolute God, the father of all things, undertook to 
solve nature by nature, as one would explain history by history, or 
poetry by poetry, without robbing the Deity of any attribute or 
excellence. On being asked for a definition of God, Thales answered, 
"That which has neither beginning nor end;" in other words, he is 
the eternal, uncaused cause. Recognizing a divine principle if not a 
divine personalty, the "wise men" were not intentionally atheistic, 
though their systems are sentimentally atheistic. What they at 
bottom proposed to discover without complicating their systems or 
beliefs, and without involving divine power in the creative realm, 
was a causal principle of life, purely objective and material, in the 
physical world itself; a self-creating, self-propagating and self-sus- 
taining power in, not outside of, nature. Committing themselves, ah 
initio, to this theory, they were confined in their searchings to 
physical origins, above which they did not think it important to go 
until a new sect contested the integrity of their theories and demanded 
another basis of investigation. 

Thales, born B. C. 640, appears as the founder of the Ionic sect, 
and as such must be accepted as the first accredited philosopher in 
human history. Reported by Diogenes Laertius, he was "the first to 
converse about natural philosophy," or the philosophy of nature, 
inquiring into its origin. A great traveler, having visited Egypt, 



76 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Phoenicia, Crete, and many other countries, observing forms of 
governments and systems of religion, he was prepared to formulate 
a philosophical belief which, being new and original and supported 
by his great learning, was received with favor by the multitudes, and 
made a channel for itself among those whose education was almost 
as liberal as his own. 

What was the first genuine philosophic, oracular utterance? 
Nothing more, nothing less than that water is in some way the 
principal of life in the natural world, the acting substitutional cause 
of all existence or phenomena. It is the prima materia, to use a 
phrase of Lewes, of all things. In this we see the naturalness of the 
philosophy of Thales; it is climatic, maritime, the outbirth of the 
surrounding sea of gulfs, bays, rivers, mists, and rains. By what 
processes this dogmatic conclusion was reached, and with what boldness 
it was proclaimed as the explanation of the mystery of the universe, 
it is not important to inquire. Perhaps the philosopher discovered what 
no observer will deny, that moisture is essential to, or an accompani- 
ment of, physical existence; that without it man, animal, plant, and 
leaf would perish ; and then Thales concluded that, as it is a 
condition of life, it must therefore be the principle of life. The inner 
weakness of the philosophy is in the want of discrimination between 
condition and cause, between principles of life and the necessary 
supports of life, a failure that is made by Spencer as well as Thales. 
It is the philosophy of material conditions, not of causal principles; 
it is a water-born, not a rational, philosophic conjecture. It is liquid 
in antithesis to dirt philosophy, but kindred to it. 

Equally materialistic, equally earth-born, a mere diversion from 
the original solution of Thales, and perhaps an inhalation of it, was 
the subsequent hypothesis of Anaximenes, who, in the calm of sincerity, 
proclaimed air to be the life-giving source of all things. This 
conclusion was deduced from the relation of the air to life. That 
which is essential to life must be the principle of life. So reasoned, 
if they reasoned at all, the ancestors of philosophy. Thales's is a 
sea-philosophy; Anaximenes's is a wind-philosophy; each was founded 
on observation, and a knowledge of some of the conditions of life; 
each was defective at the same point and in the same manner, 
namely: it attributed to matter an omnipotent, originating energy, 
the property of creative force, the original element of production. 

The Ionics were led to cosmogonies ; they interpreted the world by 
physiological principles, just as Buckle and Draper in our day 
interpret civilization ; but neither the universe nor civilization yields 
to the interpretation. Natural philosophy alone is an insufficient 
explanation of either. One century after Thales, Pythagoras, the 



P YTHA G ORAS—ZENOPHANES. 77 

founder of the Italic sect, the forerunner of a new era, the cham- 
pion of a new philosophy, appeared. Like Thales he was an 
extensive traveler ; he was also devoted to the mathematical sciences, 
especially arithmetic and geometry ; moreover, he was an ardent 
lover of music. Music and mathematics enter into his mystical 
philosophy. He held that the universe is the product of the 
harmonious co-operation of forces and factors, the harmony which he 
conceived to exist being expressed by the word number, which has 
confused those who have not inquired into its origin. Lewes asserts 
that Anaximander, who held to the abstract rather than the concrete, 
influenced Pythagoras; we believe he was as original as any Grecian 
philosopher, and a product of all his predecessors. He held to a 
mathematico-musical theory ; mathematical in that proportion is 
strictly observed in the physical plan of the universe ; musical in 
that concord, not antagonism, is the result. It differs from mate- 
rialism in that it attributes no creative energy either to the mathe- 
matical or musical principle, but that both principles were observed 
in the building of the world ; it suggests a plan of creation, with the 
Planner back of it, and is anti-materialistic. From this period or 
division in philosophy the real struggle for supremacy in speculative 
thought begins, and continues down the ages, assuming a variety of 
forms, and precipitating schools, systems, and sects, without number 
for investigation and analysis. Henceforth, philosophy is neither 
Thalic, i. e, wholly and intrinsically materialistic or physiological, nor 
Pythagorean, i. e., mystical, musical, mathematical, but a complex, 
self-clashing, dissolving, and surviving system or systems, bordering at 
times on correct interpretations, and desperate at all times in its 
purpose to approach the truth. 

Back from materialism, or nature, as if driven from it by a su- 
pernatural whirlwind of revelation, the Eleatics stood in defense of 
the one-sided thought that there is only one reality, which is being, 
and that it is the ground of all not-being; that the not-being is the 
phenomenal, without positive existence ; that it is an appearance 
only, and must be referred to being. It is not clear that Zenophanes, 
the founder of this sect, meant by "being" the one true God, al- 
though he said, "all is one," and " God is the one." He certainly 
believed in one God, in opposition to the popular polytheism, which 
owed its origin to the theological poets, Homer and Hesiod, but he 
was more interested in philosophy than in theology, and concerned him- 
self more with principles than personalities. The principle of being, 
and the non-existence of not-being, or the phenomenal world, char- 
acterized his thinking, and gave form to his philosophic utter- 
ances. This was an extreme reaction from the early materialism, and 



78 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

a midway departure from Pythagoreanism, which could not be main- 
tained, since a denial of the existence of the physical world was sure 
to subject the philosophical systems built upon the denial to great 
wrenching, and the philosophers themselves to personal embarrass- 
ment. Yet was the new philosophy preferred to any thing that pre- 
ceded it, and had it succeeded in reconciling itself to the not-being, 
or interpreting it in harmony with being, it had not so soon or readily 
dissolved, or lost its grip on the Grecian mind. Under Parmenides 
Eleaticism reached its highest development ; and under Zeno it began 
to decline. 

As exhibiting the tendency to mutation in philosophical study, 
we now consider another phase of materialism in the theory of 
Heraclitus, which, akin to the theories of the physiologists, did not 
appear until Pythagoreanism and Eleaticism had expressed themselves. 
It is a swing of the pendulum back to the starting-point. His fun- 
damental principle was that of the becoming, the not-being, the phe- 
nomenal, which had been rejected by the Eleatics. "All is and is 
not," said the philosopher; " for though in truth it does come into 
being, yet it forthwith ceases to be." Nature is a flux, ever in mo- 
tion, ever changing, like a river, and hence never the same. Zeno 
denied motion ; Heraclitus rejected the theory of rest or inertia. The 
principle of nature is fire, self-enkindled and self-extinguished. Na- 
ture is always becoming but never is. From its ceaseless flow, nature 
is responsible to itself, and has within itself an acting or efficient 
cause in fire. 

From this epoch of inquiry the philosophic struggle is simplified, 
being reduced to Eleaticism — alias idealism — on the one hand, and 
Heraclitic formalism, or realism, on the other; it comprehends the 
relation of the being and the not-being, and the possibility of their 
unity, or a common ground of interpretation. Whatever revolutions 
subsequently occur in ancient philosophy are the resultant of the conflict 
of these two higher principles of speculative knowledge. This is the divid- 
ing line, the battle-field of philosophy, viz. : the determination of the 
existence of being and non-being, and their relations, a modern as 
well as an ancient question, for Kant, Hamilton, Cousin, Comte, and 
others, have found the problem quite as perplexingly mysterious as 
did Parmenides and Heraclitus. 

Philosophy, fastening its prongs in the becoming, i. e., the phe- 
nomenal, and returning to materialism, gravitated to a lower depth 
than at any previous time under the direction of Democritus (who 
had imbibed some atheistic conceptions from Leucippus), who sought 
to eliminate the causal principle from existence and the universe. 
Like other philosophers, he traveled extensively, laughing at every 



THE ATOMIC THEORY. 79 

thing, as Heraclitus had wept over every thing, denying the evidence 
of the senses, and resolving historic events and natural phenomena 
into chance or accident. He gave prominence to what is known as 
the atomic theory, namely, that in ages past there were original 
atoms which by their own affinities were drawn toward one another, 
and by combinations, various and singular, the earth and every thing 
on it appeared. The atomic theory, though ancient, has tinctured 
the philosophy of the moderns, exhibiting itself in the motion-theory 
of Hobbes, and not remotely in the nerve-source of mental action, as 
advocated by Bain and Spencer. The philosophy entirely dispenses 
with an external power, or supervising intelligent force or principle ; 
it banishes God from the universe, a result that the positivism of 
Comte announces with unhesitating constancy. This sepulchral 
philosophy came from one who lived in a tomb, proving that the 
philosophies of the ancients were suggested by, or took their form 
and color from their surroundings. Thales saw the sea, and lo ! 
water is the first cause ; Anaximenes breathed the air, and it is the 
principle of life ; Heraclitus lived in a mountain, and the principle 
of the becoming, the solid, the phenomenal, is announced ; De- 
mocritus inhabited a tomb, and the philosophy of death emanated 
and was accepted. This last was Thalism degenerated into atheism ; 
it was a state philosophy in shrouds, decorated with flowers that 
bloom only in snows. To a greater depth philosophic thinking could 
not descend ; indeed, its next movement must be upward, away from 
tombs, out into the world, up above the mountain, beyond air, cloud, 
sea, sky. Eleaticism ventured into the highest regions, but unfortu- 
nately it had but one wing ; its flight was therefore circular, ill-bal- 
anced, one-sided, and it fell. Then, by a very natural process, it 
returned to original materialism, sinking deeper than ever in the 
darkness of its contemplations, until it was evident that it must have a 
resurrection into a better form, or perish in the tomb whence it came. 
Afflicted, as it were, with a self-remorse which included a repent- 
ance of all past materialism and atheism, and weighed down with a 
consciousness of failure, it threw off its load, and announced a new 
career for itself. This came in the form of the philosophy of Anaxag- 
oras, who, perceiving marks of design in nature, concluded that it 
was not self-originative, but that it had a governing and order-arrang- 
ing vouc, or mind, without which, whether it was personal or not, the 
universe was impossible. He was not an Eleatic in that he believed 
both in the being and the non-being, and associateol them together, 
not in the act of creation but in the act of arrangement, or method- 
izing nature. The nous in philosophy, whether it was divine, or had 
personation in being, or only represented an unconscious intellectual 



80 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

process and order, was so far in advance of the materialism of Thales, 
the number-theory of Pythagoras, the being of Zenophanes, the be- 
coming of Heraclitus, and the chance theory of Democritus, that it 
was the sign of day in Greece. Before him no one had discovered the 
teleological principle in nature, nor did he himself carry it, as Paley 
did centuries afterward, to its logical termination of establishing the 
existence of a Designer. Believing in God, he did not employ the 
philosophy of the nous in the vindication of a theistic faith, but turned 
it over to his successors. 

Still, considering the fluctuations of philosophic thought in two 
centuries, the flowing and ebbing of inquiry, the development and 
retrogression of speculative truth from Thales to Anaxagoras, it is 
gratifying that it progressed even so far as from water to nous, from 
matter to mind, as the controlling principle and informing power, 
substance, and cause, in the universe. This is the result of the first 
period, commonly called pre-Socratic, of Grecian philosophy, which, 
concerning itself chiefly with nature, and yet with ultimate facts and 
principles, advanced, through mutations many and serious, to a final 
assertion in Anaxagoras. Beginning in cosmological conceptions, vi- 
brating to unsafe forms of idealism, and then sinking into the abysses 
of atheism, it rises, glorified in the principle, if not personality, of 
mind — this is progress, not regular, methodical progress, but in* its 
final form an advance. And this unsettling and settling, this series 
of downward and upward step-taking, occurs within two centuries, pre- 
paring the Grecian mind for a rapid and a still higher flight into regions 
whose boundaries are not space and time, and in which philosophy may 
find the sole center, the infinite substance, the first cause — God. 

But the first period did not close with Anaxagoras. Between him 
and those who introduced a more decisive ethical and dialectical form 
of thought appeared the Sophists, a class of men renowned for their 
learning, but not exactly philosophic in their genius or attainments ; 
wise, shrewd, intellectual, apparently discursive, but superficial, after 
all, in the treatment of the grave problems of life. Protagoras held 
that " man is the measure of all things," a doctrine that Plato anni- 
hilated ; Gorgias, an Eleatic in principle, talked of nature as the non- 
existent ; Hippias and Prodicus, men of wonderful mathematical and 
grammatical attainments, defended their master with singular plausi- 
bility, but were always defeated by Plato. 

The Sophists mark a period in the speculative thought of Greece. 
They influenced the culture and contributed to the learning of the 
age, preparing it for the subtle and transparent polemics of the Socratic 
philosophers who soon appeared. Learned as they were, they yet de- 
nied the truths of physical science or natural philosophy, supporting 



THE SOCRATIC SYSTEM. 81 

the denials with evasive and sophistical arguments, which enhanced 
their reputation for dialectical skill and wisdom. But the imputa- 
tions they cast upon science precipitated a period in which the affirma- 
tions of science had a hearing. 

The second period of Hellenic philosophy signalized its advent by 
an immediate break with the first, making use only of its facts, but 
ignoring its conclusions. Cousin, setting aside the first period, assigns 
to Socrates the position of founder of ancient philosophy. Back of 
him he finds no genuine philosophic discernment, no philosophic 
guidance, through the mysteries of thought. He dates ancient phil- 
osophy with the birth of Socrates. In this he forgets the history of 
philosophy, which can not be thus ignored. However, the Socratic 
spirit is the only genuine philosophic spirit in the ancient world ; 
from it alone has come the highest philosophic form. 

Natural philosophy preceded Socrates ; he investigated it, affirmed 
its truth, and then went beyond ; he introduced moral philosophy, 
finally eschewing astronomy, geometry, and the whole brood of sci- 
ences, as sufficient for man, preferring a philosophy that had for its 
base moral truth, rather than physical fact. The first period was 
essentially physical, materialistic, atheistic ; the second period was eth- 
ical, sentimental, intellectual. Neither the laws of nature nor the or- 
igin of nature — not the facts, forms, or methods of nature — did Socrates 
seek to know, but moral ideas, moral principles, which may be applied 
to civil government, the family institution, and human society. Hith- 
erto there had been no application of philosophy to society, the fam- 
ily, the State, partly because it was in its infancy, but more especially 
because it was barren of ethical principles. Without moral ideas it 
could suggest nothing to rulers, legislators, parents, or the individual. 
This weakness of the pre-Socratic schools Socrates discovered ; and, 
abjuring the old scientific philosophies, he invested inquiry with a 
new and practical interest, going about bareheaded and barefooted in 
the streets of Athens, and teaching in the shops and market-places 
the highest moral duties, and man's relation to his fellow-man. The 
materialists spoke of nature ; Socrates spoke of man. Cosmogony 
characterizes the one ; psychology the other. The personality of 
man, the immortality of the soul, human responsibility, the duties of 
reciprocity, the love of justice, the practice of virtue, outward, if not 
inward, holiness, constituted the tenets of the Socratic system, so far 
forth as he was the author of a system. This implies self-knowledge, 
a knowledge of mind, a knowledge of God, all of which he taught by 
the dialectic method of question and answer, impressing moral truth 
in its wholeness upon the conscience of his age, and lifting it out of 
the slough of materialism. 

6 



82 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

According to Diogenes Laertius, Socrates would say there is only 
one good — namely, knowledge ; and only one evil — namely, ignorance. 
Socrates laid the foundations; Plato built the superstructure. Eth- 
ical was Plato ; theological also. The pre-Socratics studied nature ; 
Socrates, man ; Plato, man and God. Progressive stages, these, but 
the highest development is in Plato, as he not only includes nature 
and man, but comprehends to a degree the divine character and the 
method of divine working. Platonism, whether a system or frag- 
mentary ideas is intended, is the summit of ancient philosophy ; all 
other philosophies, however related to it, are beneath it, being less 
comprehensive and less divine. 

Aristotle, the pupil of Plato, and teacher of Alexander, founded 
the Lyceum, or peripatetic school of philosophers, which accepted the 
Platonic theory of ideas in outline, but obtained them differently, and 
made a different use of them. With Plato human ideas had their source 
in the mind's free activity ; with Aristotle they are the product of 
sensations. With the one their origin is inward ; with the other, their 
origin is outward. Plato advocated innate ideas; Aristotle, empirical 
or sensational ideas. Plato began with ideas and proceeded to facts, 
as their symbols or exponents, deducting and constructing systems or 
principles, while Aristotle gathered the facts and then inferred the 
principles. By this method of investigation Aristotle finally devel- 
oped the method of inductive reasoning, which established his fame 
forever. A trained mind will reason inductively; long before Aris- 
totle induction was an intellectual habit, but he formulated it into a 
system, declaring its laws and giving form and direction to intellectual 
pursuits. This was the dialectical fruit of his study. 

In the physical department of philosophy he was quite as rigid as, 
and perhaps more penetrating than, Plato, for he reduced the universe 
to four primary principles, viz.: matter, form, efficient cause, and end. 
Ethically, he was not as discursive or as rational as Plato, though he 
regarded man as a " political animal," and taught that the institutions 
of the family, society, and government should be maintained upon the 
basis of righteousness and in the interest of the race. 

It would not be unprofitable to contrast these three philosophers 
of the second period of ancient philosophy ; they resembled and dif- 
fered from one another, and were actuated by one purpose, weaker in 
Socrates, stronger in Plato, to ascertain the unascertained answers to 
ultimate inquiry. Socrates was the street and conversational philos- 
opher ; Plato the academic and dialogue philosopher ; Aristotle the prose- 
writing and voluminous philosopher. In the measure of their influence 
Socrates and Plato were chiefly Hellenic or national, being inspired 
with a love of country, while Aristotle was cosmopolitan or universal, 



SOCRA TES-PLA TO— ARISTOTLE. 83 

regarding mankind as of more consequence than the Grecians alone. 
Socrates taught for his age ; Plato for his country ; Aristotle for the 
world. Socrates was the ethico-practical philosopher, the persuasive 
moralist ; Plato was the idealist, not such as Parmenides, whose ideal- 
ism, excluding the phenomenal, defeated itself, but such as compre- 
hended being and not-being in their correlations and ultimate and 
hidden sources; Aristotle was the empirical philosopher, seeking 
solutions by an entirely different method. 

Plato and Aristotle, bent on one achievement, so differed in 
method of procedure, representation of thought, and style of expres- 
sion that the opinion prevailed that Aristotle was an antagonist of the 
Platonic system. Plato was a poetically expressing philosopher ; 
Aristotle, discarding and even condemning poetic dress, introduced 
passionless prose to his readers. Plato indulged in imaginative flights, 
soaring toward the sun, while Aristotle preferred to burrow toward 
the center of the earth. Both were sincere, both contributed to the 
cultivation of the philosophic spirit. 

Like the first, the second period of Grecian philosophy ends 
better than it began, though its commencement constitutes the bright- 
est epoch in Grecian speculative endeavor, none of the succeeding 
philosophers rivaling in genius, research, philosophic acumen and 
illumination this triad of teachers — Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. In 
truth, ancient philosophy had in these representatives its culmination 
of greatness, for they gave to the world independently, and yet in a 
sense connectedly, systems of logic, physics, natural theology, juris- 
prudence, and individual morality, that succeeding ages have not 
improved, and which may be studied to-day with no little advantage 
by students of humanity and worshipers of God. 

As from the first to the second period of Grecian culture was an 
ascending movement, so from the second to the third is a descending 
movement, in respect both to the character and ability of the philo- 
sophic teachers, and to the vitality and duration of the systems they 
inaugurated. Stoicism, the first system of the post- Aristotelian epoch, 
had for its founder Zeno, who was an empirical psychologist, teach- 
ing the doctrine, inherited from Aristotle, that knowledge is derived 
from the senses, and so contradicting the idea-philosophy of Platonism. 
The Stoics had the reputation of being great scholars and ingenious 
reasoners ; but, theologically, they taught that matter was pre-exist- 
ent, and God merely organized it into worlds; and, ethically, they 
dictated no higher code than that of nature. They had ideas of what 
constituted the supreme good ; they believed in virtue in general, 
were insensible to pain, and applauded heroism, or courage in bearing 
evil, as the highest duty of man. Zeno committed suicide. 



84 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Thus Stoicism was a degeneracy, compared dialectically, ethically, 
and theologically, with Platonism. 

Nor was Epicureanism, a simultaneous philosophy, originated by 
Epicurus, any better ; rather has it fewer commendable features. It 
is said by Rollin that the Epicureans were the only natural philos- 
ophers of Greece ; that they pursued science methodically, and sought 
to ascertain the facts of nature and systematize them ; but the his- 
torian's statement is too sweeping. The science of Epicurus is atomic 
and atheistic. To be sure, he avowed faith in God, but denied that 
he exercised any paternal care over men, or had any interest in the 
affairs of this world — a theological view no better than atheism itself. 
He revived the atomic theory of the universe, elaborated by Democ- 
ritus, and dispensed with a Creator., 

Accepting the sensational philosophy of the Stoics as a correct 
theory of knowledge, he went beyond them in the declaration that 
men see things as they are, the senses in no case deceiving or mis- 
representing. For instance, the moon, he said, is no larger than it 
seems, and every thing is as it seems to us. 

Ethically, while Cleanthus, speaking for the Stoics, had said, 
"Pleasure is not an end of nature," Epicurus announced that pleas- 
ure is the supreme good, and made it the measure of human activity 
and morality. He denied the immortality of man, and rejected the 
doctrine of responsibility. 

Theologically, philosophically, ethically, Epicureanism descended 
to the lowest depths. Its value has not been demonstrated. In 
what the supreme good consisted, whether in virtue, as the Stoics 
chanted, or in pleasure, as the Epicureans declared, was not only the 
line of difference between the two sects, but it also became the in- 
quiry, and, therefore, the actual spirit of the post-Aristotleian philos- 
ophy. Other questions, such as man's nature, and his relation to the 
infinite and the phenomenal, received occasional attention, but the 
absorbing theme was not the ultimate of things, nor the ground of 
existence, but how to make existence comfortable and happy. 
Hence, one reads of the pleasure-seeking, the luxury-loving spirit, 
and the voluptuousness of the Epicureans. Epicurean philosophy 
was the philosophy of pleasure, amusement, jollification, eating and 
drinking, and proposed to introduce an era of good feeling, fellow- 
ship, and hospitality among men. This being the end of philosophy, 
it was fitting to paint the scene of a barbecue at the entrance of its 
temple, and make it the symbol of its purpose. From Plato to Epi- 
curus is a stepping out of the study into the dining-room, a going 
from the writing-desk to the table, an exchange of books for vegeta- 
bles and meats. This is a supreme and fatal degeneracy. 



DECADENCE OF OLD SYSTEMS. 85 

Nor is it surprising that, with Stoicism on the one hand, and Epi- 
cureanism on the other, mongrel systems of philosophy, some based 
on doubt, others without any discoverable basis, should arise, and 
that the Athenian mind, once united on Plato, should now be di- 
vided and shivered into fragments. The ancient academy is no 
longer in the ascendant, but Pyrrho steps forth, announcing as a 
leading principle of philosophy the necessity of indifference to all 
things, to all philosophies, theories, governments, and religions. Not 
being certain of any thing, he neither affirmed nor denied ; he held 
to no opinion, considering it probably, as Plato phrases it, a "sacred 
disease." This is skepticism reduced to a science. Pyrrhonism 
passed for a philosophy. 

Skepticism, or the denial of certainty in knowledge, was the or- 
ganic doctrine of the new academy, under the leadership of Arcesilaus 
and his successors. The third period of Greek philosophy, beginning 
with sensuous experience as the capital doctrine or central fact of 
both Stoicism and Epicureanism, descends into a denial of sense-knowl- 
edge, then of all knowledge, and, finally, of all truth. 

Having traced original philosophic inquiry through its three 
stages of development, we find the salient doctrine, or esprit de corps, 
of each to be: 1. That of the first period, materialism; 2. That of the 
second, idealism; 3. That of the third, empiricism, ending in radical 
skepticism. 

From this bird's-eye view of the ancient struggle, the rise and fall 
of philosophy, it is seen that modern philosophy has not only com- 
bated the questions that disturbed the Hellenic mind, but also has 
essayed their solution from the same standpoints of materialism, 
idealism, and empiricism, and therefore has made essentially very 
little progress. 

What followed the Hellenic forms of philosophic thought? In 
other words, what were the results of that fermenting period of inquiry 
and speculation? What systems, if any, were carried over into the 
Christian era, and embodied themselves in the civilization, literature, 
and moral progress of mankind ? Or did any survive the wreck of 
the general break-up of Grecian life? To one who has hoped for 
permanent things from that original period, the fact of the decadence 
of nearly every school of thought and every system of philosophy is 
painful, and he looks over the weary waste of the great struggle with 
a mournful interest and a deep sympathy of regret. Save the better 
part of Platonism and the dialectics of Aristotle, very little of absolute 
worth has been transmitted from that pre-Christian epoch to our day. 
Intensely acute as was the Grecian mind, it must also be said that it 
failed to perpetuate the philosophic spirit in the race ; its own philos- 



86 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ophy died without immediate succession or issue. It had no heirs 
and left its estate in the tomb. Cousin writes that the Socratic spirit 
survived for ten centuries, but it then disappeared in the mysticism 
of Neoplatonism. For nearly sixteen centuries the philosophic impulse 
was quiet; no great questions, save those of religion and sectarian 
forms, agitated the public mind; wars were numerous, dividing 
history into eras; the people sank into darkness, and an inter- 
regnum, so to speak, prevailed in the philosophic realm from Christ 
to Bacon. 

Of this interregnum, or middle epoch, we shall now speak. To us 
it seems a misfortune that during the rise of the Church the intel- 
lectual giants of Southern Europe, seizing the philosophic truths of 
Plato and Aristotle, did not appropriate them to the service of 
religion ; but the world seemed shut up as in a cave, the people were 
like fishes without eyes ; and so the long roll of centuries passed be- 
fore the philosophic spirit returned. However, let us not be under- 
stood as implying that no attempts were made anywhere or by any 
one for the revival of interest in the themes formerly discussed by 
the Greek academicians ; there were inquiries, but they were sporadic ; 
speculations, but without majesty ; and an occasional philosophy, but 
it ended in mysticism or religious eccentricity. 

Neoplatonism, or Alexandrian mysticism, arising in the third 
century through the dialectical theology of Plotinus, was an attempt 
to revive Platonism, or to unite Greek philosophy and Christianity; 
but it either added or subtracted so much from both that the result 
was a mystical religion and an indefinable philosophy. It proposed 
visions and miracles on the one side, and abstraction and Platonic 
platitude on the other. It espoused inspiration as a possible experi- 
ence; extra mental illumination, spiritual ecstasy, and absorption for 
the time into the life of the Deity, constituted one of its doctrinal 
points ; it was somewhat of a religion and somewhat of a philosophy, 
but exclusively neither. 

Cousin affirms that it was the final assertion of Greek philosophy, 
in which form it expired, Justinian closing the schools of philosophy 
in Athens, A. D. 529 ; but it is not evident which produced it, Chris- 
tianity or Platonism. In our judgment, Greek philosophy terminated, 
not in mysticism, but in skepticism, as we have shown. It expired, 
not by contact with religion, but by descending into nothingness. 
For three hundred years Neoplatonism swayed the East, but array- 
ing itself against Christianity, it at last decayed and perished. 

Centuries now pass without mental quickening, or illumination of 
the grave Hellenic problems; no one asks questions, no answers are 
framed. Finally the sluggish mind of man is stirred, not to any 



THE INTERREGNUM. 87 

great depth, but it is stirred. Scotus Erigena, standing on the edge 
of the ninth century and looking backward, perceived the merit 
of Neoplatonism, and, appropriating it, he sought to combine it with 
Christianity and present to the world both a new religion and a 
new philosophy. But Christianity, true to its inner life, refused to 
enter into any combination, and especially to suffer Neoplatoni- 
zation. Whatever religious kinship there was between them, the 
one was stiff in death, while the other was the vital force of 
mankind ; hence, no partnership, no union, doctrinal or otherwise, 
was contracted. 

Nearly two centuries pass, and Anselm is born, A. D. 1035. A 
new era is at once apparent. Philosophical palpitations characterize 
the three succeeding centuries. Scholasticism, inaugurated by Anselm, 
is perpetuated by such rare minds as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, 
John of Salisbury, Koger Bacon, and others, exciting enthusiasm in 
the Church, and reviving the philosophic spirit in society. It was a 
type of Christian philosophy, not a Platonic religion. Hitherto the 
Church had been engrossed with theology, the refutation of errors, 
the settlement of doctrines, but the time was fully ripe for the con- 
sideration of analytic thought. Intense as were the schoolmen, they 
erred in the following manner: John of Salisbury, discarding specu- 
lative thought, raised the standard of utility as the measure of all 
things; Thomas Aquinas, most learned and devout, exalted the 
understanding above the moral sense; Duns Scotus, a profound 
reasoner, exalted the will as the instrument of character, and all 
affirmed the explanation of divine truth by rational and even dog- 
matic processes. The unity of faith and knowledge, or the scientific 
apprehension of supernatural mysteries, was the backbone idea of 
scholasticism ; but it was not strong enough to support either philoso- 
phy or religion. Its persistence was its destruction. It developed 
into nominalism, or the application of names, denying realities and 
realism, or the affirmation of objective realities. With William of 
Occam, the latest and strongest schoolman who espoused nominalism 
in its most radical form, scholasticism ceased to exist as an indepen- 
dent or systematic philosophy. 

Thus ended the interregnum. 

As great movements in nature, such as earthquakes and revolu- 
tions or reformations in history, are frequently preceded by outward 
and anticipatory signs, so the modern epoch of philosophy, fruitful 
in philosophic experiments, was preceded by signs of preparation, 
and was at length precipitated by an exhibition of the scientific spirit. 
Usually, the religious spirit has preceded philosophic speculation, and 
has often followed it, either in mysticism or some other form ; modern 



88 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY, 

philosophy was introduced by the scientific spirit, which has pervaded, 
and even dictated, the philosophic course, materializing, corrupting, 
and undermining it. Scholasticism extinct, a love of letters revived, 
America was discovered, and a new interest in the natural sciences 
was generated ; but the intellectual activity of the period revived also 
a genuine philosophic purpose. Francis Bacon, born A. D. 1561, 
reported himself as the apostle of a new era by submitting new 
methods of reasoning and inciting a spirit of investigation such as had 
never been felt by man. Partaking of the scientific spirit of Roger 
Bacoif, the schoolman, he plunged into the work of original discovery, 
adopting as guiding principles the following: 1. Abandonment of the 
past in so far as to reject its influence; he declined to be prejudiced 
by ancient teachings, or enter upon investigation with preconceived 
views. 2. He affirmed that knowledge is the result of experience. 
3. He reinstated the inductive method of reasoning which had been 
handed down from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, but which had been 
obscured and ignored by the schoolmen. 

An intellectual quickening was the result ; love of knowledge and 
a scientific eagerness dominated the public mind. In a much less 
degree, but with a similar purpose, Jacob Boehme was arousing the 
German mind from a scientific and philosophic lethargy, preparing it 
for an upheaval, a revolution, indeed ; yea, more, for that patient 
study of the greatest problems in philosophy which has distinguished 
that country down to this day. 

Let it not be supposed, however, from their relation to modern 
thought, that either Bacon or Boehme was the founder of modern 
philosophy. Lord Verulam, it is true, was the instrumental inspirer 
of the intellectual life of modern times, on which account it is almost 
like robbing him of a well-earned glory to assign the beginning of the 
philosophic epoch to a later period, and to name another thinker as 
its founder. Yet Bacon was not a philosopher; he was a scientist, 
an investigator of physical facts, formulating no philosophic system, 
and leaving none to the generations following. Like Magellan, 
who, beholding the broad Pacific, did not venture to navigate it, 
Bacon may have cast his eye over the philosophic sea, but he did 
not sail on its waters; he clung to earth, its facts, realities, laws, 
and forces. 

Fifty years later, Descartes, a Frenchman, assumed a philosophic 
attitude and indulged in philosophic utterances which history justly 
acknowledges as the beginning of modern speculative thought, the 
tracing of which through its manifold stages of development, its ob- 
scurities and transparencies, its orthodoxies and heterodoxies, its ma- 
terialism and idealism, must now engage our attention. Admitting 



DUALISM OF DESCARTES. 89 

that other classifications are possible, we propose to consider modern 
philosophy under the following general heads, without subdivisions: 
1. Dualism ; 2. Spinozism ; 3. Empiricism ; 4. Common-sense Truism ; 
5. Idealism ; 6. Emotionalism ; 7. Pessimism ; 8. Positivism ; 9. 
Rationalism; 10. Evolution; 11. Ideal Eealism ; 12. Theologic Dog- 
matism ; 13. Christian Philosophy. 

With this outline before us, and remembering what is beyond it, 
we exclaim with the poet, only changing the view to philosophy — 

"But these attained, we tremble to survey 
The growing labors of the lengthened way ; 
The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes, 
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise." 

Descartes, imbibing the Baconian spirit of indifference to the past, 
intensified it to absolute doubt of all teaching, a phase of Pyrrhonism 
justified by the solemn and sublime purpose that dictated it. The 
starting-point of investigation is doubt. Accept nothing, not for skep- 
tical ends, but for truth's sake. Yet was this rather an incidental 
than an essential principle. It was not the end, only the beginning 
of philosophy ; it was not the result of, but an inducement to, inquiry. 

Beginning thus, Descartes faithfully and laboriously took up the 
great problems of philosophy; viz., matter, mind, knowledge, and 
God, wrestling with the difficulties that inhered in the problems 
themselves, and declaring certain principles to be fundamental to 
their solution. The famous philosophic apothegm, "Cogito, ergo sum* 
he originated, and insisted upon its sufficiency and authority in the 
discussion of the problem of existence. From the power to think, 
from thinking as a distinct act, he inferred existence. He did not 
see that, reversing the proposition, the truth he meant to convey 
would have been declared in a statelier and more logical form. Thought 
is proof of existence, says Descartes; existence is proof of thought, say 
we. He believed in both ; he believed in matter and being, distin- 
guishing them as follows: the essence of matter is extension, the 
essence of mind is thought. The Cartesian definitions and discrimina- 
tions, subjected to keen analysis, required modification before they could 
be accepted; but the destructive weakness of the system was the in- 
terpretation of the relation, or rather non-relation, of the two sub- 
stances, as he designated mind and matter. They exist without the 
possibility of interaction or mutual influence ; the mind does not in- 
fluence the body, the body affects not the mind. This is dualism, 
the corner-stone of modern philosophy, the first product of the mod- 
ern philosophic spirit. 

Himself undisturbed by the dualistic conclusion, the pupils and 
successors of Descartes, recognizing that mediation between the two 



90 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

distinct, non-interacting substances was a necessity, undertook to 
affect it. Geulinex and Malebranche, especially, espying the incon- 
sistency of dualism, were greatly exercised to bring about a recon- 
ciliation, and at last affirmed that the interacting union of mind 
and matter is possible with God. 

Vulnerable as is the Cartesian philosophy from its dualism, it is 
clear in its enunciation of the difference between thought and matter, 
or being and not-being ; but, striking the difference, it did not solve 
the problem of existence, it really added difficulties to the solution. 

Spinoza appeared A. D. 1632, a man destined to exert a potential 
influence in philosophy, but who did not succeed even as well as Des- 
cartes, in the settlement of the problem of being. He agreed with 
Descartes in interpreting God as the infinite substance, with this 
difference : Descartes interpreted God to be a personal being ; Spinoza 
pronounced God to be the universe. Spinozism is pantheism, or as 
Jacobi said, it is fatalism and atheism. The belief in one infinite sub- 
stance, as the source of all things, is Christian in form, but its inter- 
pretation is the essence of atheism. Of this one substance Spinoza 
affirmed that mind and matter are mere accidents ; that is, they are 
not the properties but the emanations of the one substance, as 
according to the nebular hypothesis, the worlds are the emanations of 
one central orb. The dualism of Descartes was thus swallowed up' in 
the monism of Spinoza, which was unsatisfactory in the extreme. 
Dualism was not a solution ; hence, it was unsatisfactory. Spinozism 
was a solution ; but it was even more unsatisfactory than dualism, 
for it contained the worst elements, namely, pantheism, atheism, and 
fatalism; while dualism recognized mind and matter as essentially 
distinct, and God as infinite mind, as absolute personality. In the 
hands of Spinoza philosophy came to a standstill, if it did not 
retrograde into a barbarism. 

The year that gave Spinoza to the world also witnessed the birth 
of John Locke, who early appeared as an investigator and original 
thinker. Descartes incited him to thought ; Spinoza, being contem- 
poraneous, did not affect him. His mission was to consider the mind, 
its original constitution, the laws of thought, and the sources of 
knowledge, and, devoting himself most carefully to these inquiries, 
he embodied the results in his famous essay on the "Human Under- 
standing." As a starting-point Mr. Locke held, contrary to Plato, that 
there are no innate ideas, that the mind at birth is a void, a blank 
space, a tabula rasa, containing nothing, originating nothing. It is a 
receiver of impressions and ideas, not an originator of thought. It 
derives all it knows from without; it knows nothing of itself. Sen- 
sation is the source of knowledge. Subsequently driven by unan- 



EMPIRICISM OF LOCKE. 91 

swerable criticism into a philosophic relenting, he added reflection, 
as a means of knowledge, but the materials for reflection he insisted 
sensation or experience furnished, so that he drifted into an empirical, 
realistic, and materialistic philosophy. 

Kespecting being, his sensationalism logically compelled a denial 
of all knowledge of the divine substance, or the character of God. 
How different this from the dualism of Descartes and the monism 
of Spinoza! Descartes interprets mind and matter in their differ- 
entiation ; Spinoza, in their pantheistic unity ; Locke estimates mind 
as ja substance without quality, subordinated in its activities to foreign 
influence, i. e. , to external impression. Descartes denies all interaction ; 
Spinoza merges interaction into unity of action; Locke denies to 
mind independent action, but allows it an externally forced activity. 
Both dualism and monism are perplexingly mysterious ; sensationalism 
is a transparent dogmatism. While Locke's theory of mind has been 
exploded, and although Morell characterizes his philosophy as 
ephemeral, it is indisputable that it has had a marked influence on 
the philosophic thought of two centuries. Not upon dualism or 
Spinozism, but upon Locke's empiricism, philosophic systems have 
been reared which exist to-day, contaminating speculative thought and 
reducing all inquiry to the level of materialism. Hume, taking up 
Locke's theory, fashioned a skeptical philosophy whose influence has 
been pernicious to the last degree. If sensation is the source of knowl- 
edge, then knowledge is mere impression, it is not a mental reality ; 
and, reasoning after the manner of Berkeley, who denied reality to 
matter, he virtually denied reality to mind. This was the outcome of the 
philosophy of Locke, a skepticism that was followed in due time and 
inevitably by all the consequences natural to it, as looseness in morals, 
a decline of the doctrine of human responsibility, and an abandon- 
ment of religious belief and rules. 

The greatest mischief, as the logical result of empiricism, occurred 
in France, expressing itself in a variety of theories, but all ended in 
the maelstrom of naked materialism. For instance, Condillac, 
denying that the sources of knowledge are sensation and reflection, 
reduced them to one and became the founder of the school of sen- 
sualism ; Helvetius became the apostle of altruism ; Diderot disposed 
by logical processes of morality and God; La Mettrie overthrew 
faith in the immortality of the soul; and so philosophy, instead of 
lifting man up to the knowledge of the one substance which had 
been proclaimed by Descartes and even pantheistically represented 
by Spinoza, degenerated into a skepticism that well-nigh ruined a nation 
and threatened the submergence of the Christian faith in its downfall. 

This realism, eventuating in skeptical disaster, could not long 



92 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

prevail. It was a negativism; the mind requires affirmation. Reaction 
was inevitable. 

Empiricism, or Locke's theory of knowledge, was formidably 
antagonized by Reid, a Scottish philosopher, who, adopting the 
psychological method, not only counteracted the dangerous tendencies 
of sensationalism, but prepared the way for the idealism that followed. 
Locke, having declared that the "mind knows not things immediately, 
but by the intervention of the ideas it has of them," Reid proceeded 
to show the contrary, namely, that our perceptions are not depend- 
ent upon intermediate ideas, but are immediate. This he established 
by the facts of consciousness, or the common sense of the race, which 
in his judgment weighed more than the most brilliant abstraction. 
The term "common sense" has, therefore, been applied to his 
philosophy, as embracing intuitions, beliefs, spontaneous convictions, 
the universal judgments of men. Whether the philosophy itself is 
sound or not, it was a step in the right direction, since it negatived 
empiricism. It was also Socratic in spirit in that it rested on a 
psychological birthright tor authority. Dugald Stewart, possibly 
more learned than Reid, amplified and classified the philosophy of 
" common sense," but really originated no independent philosophy. 
Brown antagonized Reid, and Abercrombie was more of a critic of 
all philosophic ideas than a philosopher. Reid stands at the head of 
Scottish philosophers, with weaknesses that later schools have detected. 
He did not quite annihilate empiricism. 

Another period was at hand; it had dawned with the dawning 
of sensationalism in the idealism of Leibnitz, but did not attain 
meridian strength until Kant, Fitche, Schelling, and Hegel had 
applied their master forces to its development. Over against the 
empiricism of Locke, Hume, and others, idealism appeared, con- 
testing the right of dominion in the realm of philosophy. As in the 
past, so now, the contests in philosophy have been chiefly between 
these two schools, empiricism and idealism, which will continue until 
a higher philosophy appears which shall supersede both. 

It is conceded that on the whole, Germany, beginning with Leib- 
nitz, furnishes for more than one century the leading philosophic 
minds of the world. Heine says the English control the sea, the 
French the land, the Germans the air; hence, metaphysics and 
moral philosophy in Germany. 

Leibnitz was born A. D. 1646, fourteen years later than Locke and 
Spinoza, and, detecting the vulnerability of monism, he at once assailed 
it. He held to the individuality of mind, a vague conception of the 
personality of God, and the separate substance of matter. Pantheism 
he rejected as violative of faith in the immortality of the soul. 



MONADISM— IDEALISM. 93 

His cosmological views separated him still more from Spinoza, 
and placed him upon the pedestal of an independent thinker. His 
cosmology was a monadology, the theory of monads applied to the 
interpretation of the universe. Such was the apparent resemblance 
between the atomic theory of Democritus and the monadology of 
Leibnitz that the latter was compelled to frame a definition of the 
monad, or endow it with properties and functions which did not in- 
here in original atoms. Accordingly, each monad is distinguished 
by its individuality, independence, and unlikeness to every other 
monad : the atoms of Democritus were uniform in size, form, func- 
tion, and appearance. This is a broad distinction, but not so broad 
as that which, allowing the atom to be potentially active, conferred 
on the monad the properties of soul, making it a self-subsistent, nor- 
mal substance and an intelligent, acting reality. The monad is a 
soul. While this monadic idealism is not free from objection, it ac- 
complished much toward the cancellation of Spinozism. It, therefore, 
had a mission. Monadism resisted, if it did not overthrow, monism. 

Monadism, however, is not the height of idealism. George 
Berkeley, an Irish philosopher, reveling in the transcendentalism of 
his own genius, became infatuated with the idea that he was to reveal 
a new principle in philosophy, and, by a singular dialectic process, 
plunged the theorists into the wildest antagonisms, and imperiled 
some well-established conclusions of philosophy. By a course of 
reasoning plausible, apposite, and captivating, he arrived at the con- 
clusion that the natural or phenomenal world does not exist, that it 
is an illusion, a mere appearance — a doctrine not new, since the 
Eleatics, especially Parmenides, and the Sophists, had rejected the 
existence of matter — but the argument was new, and the world was 
agitated. The other half of his principle, that mind alone exists, 
led to the exaltation of man's character, and the glorification of the 
eternal Spirit ; but, as a principle, it is as defective as that of the 
Eleatics, and could not be sustained. Hume, employing Berkeley's 
argument, soon demonstrated the non-existence of mind, a conclusion 
more dangerous than, but as logical as, that of the non-existence of 
matter. To such irrational conclusions did philosophical speculation 
conduct the speculators. Evidently, idealism had not reached its 
culmination, and waited for a truer exponent and defender. 

In the appearance of Kant idealism had a protagonist of pro- 
found wisdom, a thinker of acute understanding, and a framer 
of an original philosophical view of existence, and its various 
problems. Hume's conclusion aroused the philosophical spirit in 
him. He began to question the power of reason ; he examined 
it as one would an instrument, and sought to ascertain its re- 



94 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

lation to the problems of Hume, Berkeley, and Descartes. What 
is the range or content of the reason? What are the limita- 
tions, if any, to rational conception? Fundamentally, Kant held 
that the world can not be known, since space and time intervene; 
what he calls the " thing-in-itself," i. e., the substance or reality 
of things, we can not know, but only phenomena and their relations. 
This principle of necessary limited knowledge, though fundamental 
to the Kantian creed, and its greatest weakness, for it virtually 
abandons the chief end of philosophy, namely, the search for the 
noumenon, is not permitted, with evident inconsistency, to interfere 
with the successful attempt of the practical reason to demonstrate one 
ultimate cause, and all other truths of theology or philosophy. 
Reason has two hemispheres, or cerebral functions; the one he calls 
Pure or Theoretical Reason, which, subtle, penetrating, and exceed- 
ingly sensitive to the presence of thought, is yet unable to establish 
the immortality of the soul, the moral freedom of man, or the exist- 
ence of God. In his "Critique of Pure Reason," his greatest work, 
after showing that pure reason deals with three ideas, or the greatest 
in philosophy; viz., the psychological, the cosmological, and the 
theological, he confesses that the ideas are unsustained by Pure 
Reason ; that is, that while the contents of Pure Reason are these 
ideas, it will not vindicate them, because it abounds in antinomies and 
paralogisms, and the ideas themselves have, therefore, not a constitu- 
tional authority, but only a regulative force. This is not going over to 
Locke's denial of innate ideas, but it is in that direction, from which, 
however, Kant himself recoiled. His real estimate of these ideas is 
seen in the demonstrating power of the Practical Reason, which vin- 
dicates them beyond successful assault from any quarter. The Pure 
Reason is the "nay" of Kant; the Practical reason the "yea" and 
"amen." By the one the indemonstrableness of the greatest truths 
is apparent; by the other their demonstration is self-evident, clear, 
and convincing. A close examination, however, of the two reasons, 
does not satisfy us that they exist, or, existing, that a philosophy can 
possibly be maintained upon both. The universal consciousness of 
the race furnishes no testimony in proof of their existence, nor is it 
possible in psychological classification to assign definite functions to 
two kinds of reason. If two reasons, why not two memories, two 
imaginations, two wills, two consciences ? Besides, admitting the two 
reasons, the Pure ought to be the stronger, unfallen, unbiased reason, 
while the Practical ought to be the fallen, imperfect, and, therefore, 
unsafe and inconclusive reason. But Kant insists that the Pure, or 
stronger reason, is the infirm, unhealthy, self-contradicting reason, 
unable to vindicate its own ideas, while the fallen, Practical reason is 



KANT— JACOBI. 95 

able to demonstrate the highest truth. This is the essence of anti- 
nomy itself. Far preferable is Cousin's division of the reason into 
intuitional or spontaneous, and reflective or voluntary, the value of 
which for theological or philosophical purposes he defines clearly and 
satisfactorily. By the spontaneous reason God is immediately and 
universally recognized, since it is absolute reason which is in harmony 
with God. Spontaneous reason is theistic, concluding reason. It is 
reliable because intuitional. Eeflective reason is somewhat uncertain. 

Guilty of bad and unwarrantable distinctions as he was, Kant 
was not one-sided, as was Berkeley ; nor skeptical, as was Hume ; nor 
monadic, as was Leibnitz ; nor dualistic, as was Descartes ; nor pan- 
theistic, as was Spinoza ; but his subjective idealism was orthodoxically 
rational in its intent, looking toward the infinite with the eye of a 
quickened, rational judgment, and inspired rational research with the 
promise of reward. Great was the immediate influence of the Kantian 
philosophy ; it is great still, though its positions are undergoing mod- 
ification, and a gradual change of base in inquiry is apparent. 

Not long after Kant, philosophy assumed a new phase, not in con- 
tradiction of Kant, but in advance of it — a kind of tangent from the 
circle of thought in which the thinkers had moved, bringing them 
to a pause, if nothing more. Jacobi heralded a new revelation, and 
claimed that he had found the true path to ultimate knowledge, sup- 
porting the claim with learning, and dialectic, not to say metaphysi- 
cal, plausibility; and, had he not weakened his conclusions by 
self-confessions, he possibly had pioneered philosophy through the 
wilderness of doubt and darkness into the broad sunlight of truth. 
Taking up Spinozism, he showed that it was the result of a demon- 
strative philosophical attempt; that is, it necessarily followed from 
certain accepted data, or the categories of reason, though in its es- 
sence it was atheistic and fatalistic. Considering the theoretical 
reason of Kant, he showed that it must sustain, or at least can not 
contradict, the three ideas which constitute the estate of a prime 
philosophy. Rising from this stand-point, he pointed out that the 
supersensible can be known only by supersensible means, not by the 
reason alone, but by the principle of faith, or feeling, a "direct ap- 
prehension, without proof, of the True, the supersensuous, the 
Eternal." Thus "faith-philosophy," or emotionalism, had its intro- 
duction, but Jacobi was ridiculed, as preaching theology in disguise, 
and he admitted, from what motive is not clear, that while his heart 
embraced his conclusions, his head or reason condemned them. 

Nevertheless, Emotionalism anchored itself in the deep sea of 
speculative thought, stirring up the waters of inquiry, and even in- 
trenching on the distant, rock-rooted shores of the holiest truth. It 



96 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

could not be ignored. It was not annihilated. It still exists. 
Schleiermacher, aroused and embracing its fundamental conceptions, 
relieved it of its theological aspects, and endowed it with a more 
legitimate or acceptable philosophic form. Charging the Reason with 
incapacity to discover ultimate truth, he declared it could be known 
only through the consciousness, or the intuition of feeling. This 
knowing, truth-searching consciousness has two sides, viz. : there is 
in man a "God-consciousness," from which a feeling of dependence 
on the Infinite arises, and there is a Christian consciousness, which 
inspires communion with God through Jesus Christ. Out of the 
former arises the thought of dependence, which implies its correla- 
tive — a being independent, or upon whom man depends. Hence, 
from the spiritual feeling, rather than the reason, springs the onto- 
logical conception — long searched for and believed in — of God. 

Mausel, discovering in man a sense of moral obligation to the in- 
dependent being, conclusively establishes the existence of such a 
being, carrying the faith-philosophy over in still clearer form to the 
support of the theistic conception. However, contrary to Schleier- 
macher, he does not see in the sense of dependence a consciousness of 
the Absolute, but only an implication of the infinite. The distinction 
is clear, but the result is the same. 

But this philosophy, exciting amusement on the one hand, and 
deep seriousness on the other, has not fully satisfied even Christian 
thinkers, as it seems to rely too exclusively upon the uncertain and 
perturbed emotions of consciousness. The contents of consciousness 
are proleptic of ultimate truth, but while philosophy will accept ra- 
tional intuitions, it is slow to accept the conclusions of feeling, or to 
be guided by the various indexes of consciousness. Evidently want- 
ing in some particulars, there may be hidden in this new philosophy 
the leaven that will leaven the whole lump. Ignoring the Kantian 
basis, it has perhaps perpetrated a suicidal act, but there may be in 
it a guiding principle which, in other hands, will be developed and 
purified. 

Meanwhile, idealism, temporarily eclipsed, or rather suspending 
its aggressive purpose, soon reappears in a form kindred to, but 
different from, the Kantian idea. As in Nevada there are streams 
which, running for miles, suddenly sink out of sight and then reap- 
pear, so idealism, sinking for a brief time into obscurity, again 
presents itself in the utterances of Fitche, Schelling, and Hegel, 
changing its complexion, but retaining its spirit, with each thinker. 

Fitche is the exponent of a strict subjective idealism, which, de- 
fined, has exclusive respect to the ego as the only substance. Between 
the ego-in-itself and the object-in-itself we must choose ; one must be 



SCHELLING— HEGEL. 97 

rejected. He cast his vote in favor of the ego. Yet there is a non- 
ego which he regarded as the limitation or hindrance of the ego, so 
that the Don-ego is a part of, or the umbration of, the ego. The Ego, 
therefore, is all in all. In later years he interpreted the ego as God, 
which, including the non-ego, savored of Spinozism, or a mild and 
unintended form of pantheism. Hence, subjective idealism was in 
peril ; it needed correction, purification. 

Schelling, born thirteen years after Fitche, passed through many 
mental vicissitudes, being captivated at first with Fitche and becom- 
ing an idealist, but, charmed by other theories, he drifted from one 
to another, until he developed a form of philosophy known as ob- 
jective idealism, the contrary of Fitch e's. He began by recognizing 
the same absolute in nature as in mind: "Nature is visible mind, 
and mind is invisible nature ; " but this species of subjective idealism 
did not satisfy him. From this point his struggles multiply and his 
driftings commence. He is anxious to formulate the absolute, and, 
vibrating between subject and object, or the ego and the non-ego, he 
concludes that the Absolute is neither subject nor object, but the root 
of both. However, the spell of this objective idealism was soon 
broken, and, imbibing Spinozism, he rejected both subjective and 
objective idealism, announcing as a philosophic dictum the indifference 
of the real and the ideal, and the reason as the only Absolute. With 
this conclusion this restless thinker is soon dissatisfied, and drifts into 
the latitude of Neo-Platonism, discarding nature and all finite things, 
and looking to the Absolute as the only Eeal. Being and not the 
"becoming" (a touch of pure Eleaticism) absorbs his thought and 
receives his homage. Even this high-toned conception brings him no 
comfort, nor had philosophy the power to comfort him. In all its 
various stages philosophy had given to Schelling only an idea of God, 
not God himself. He yearned for a knowledge of the absolute, and, 
driven by intellectual impulses and instructive entreaties, he went on, 
trying, testing, accepting, and rejecting philosophies, one after an- 
other, until in despair of soul he turns from philosophy to Johannean 
Christianity, which reveals to him the everlasting God, and he is 
satisfied. In passing, we note that this is the cure for all speculation. 

Idealism again appears, attaining an absolute and final character 
in Hegel who affirms the existence of the Absolute, but the Absolute 
is every thing. In his logic he discusses the doctrine of being, the 
doctrine of essence, and the doctrine of notion, positing that being 
is, per se, the one, but the one is the manifold ; that is, there are no 
distinctions between thought and being, subject and object; all are 
one and the one is all. "The Absolute is, with him, not the infinite 
substance, as with Spinoza ; nor the infinite subject, as with Fitche ; 

7 



98 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

nor the infinite mind, as with Schelling ; it is a perpetual process, an 
eternal thinking, without beginning and without end." This God 
is the unity of all things, the finite and the infinite, the natural and 
the supernatural, the temporal and the eternal, involving the stu- 
pendous paralogism of the identity of Being and Nothing ; a pan- 
theism illogical for Hegel's law of logic is the identity of contraries 
or contradictions, while from Aristotle to our day the law of 
contradiction has been considered unassailable ; a pantheism more 
intense than any Grecian form of it; a pantheism absurd, anti- 
Christian, unphilosophic, atheistic. 

While Hegel threw up a mountain range at the front, defending 
his position with force, his philosophy, or the philosophy of idealism, 
as he had generalized it, was bound to decline, and with it idealism 
in an absolute form. If idealism were constructively a disguised 
pantheism, or if its final determinations were the overthrow of the 
Kantian postulates of reason, in either case it must be abandoned ; 
and Hegel did much to aggravate both of these possible accusations. 
Absolute idealism, therefore, rose and fell with Hegel. From the 
decline of Hegelianism philosophy degenerates from its lofty purpose to 
find the ultimate cause and contents itself with becoming largely a 
negativism ; there is a general breaking up ; there is no uniformity of 
method in investigation ; unity of purpose in pursuit is visibly absent. 

Schopenhauer is the first representative of the universal decline, 
for, espousing subjective idealism, and accepting Fitche's interpretation 
of the absolute, he reduces the subject to a state of passivity, and so 
transfigures idealism into realism. He retains the " thing-in-itself," 
not with Kant's explanations, but asserts that it is the will, a blind, 
necessary force, moving and regulating all existence. The world is 
both real and ideal; the Will is the real world; the ideal is that 
which each person represents to himself. "The world is my repre- 
sentation and I am only when I represent," says this teacher. Here 
is idealistic-realism, or realistic-idealism, of a beautiful type, but 
which is singularly defective in its physical, not to say psychological 
elements, for it not only denies objectivity to the world, as such, but 
it locates the subject in the object, a poetic confusion of distinct con- 
ceptions rather than positive truth. Yet Schopenhauer admits the 
existence of the natural world, as the product of will, which actualizes 
itself, (a), in the organic world; (b), in the vegetable kingdom; (c), 
in animals. Its highest object-form is the human brain. Contending 
that Will is the thing-in-itself, the moving, universal force, he like- 
wise contends for the contradiction that physical causation is identical 
with matter, and causality itself is the law of sufficient reason. This 
transfer of causation from the will to the substance or matter, pre- 



PESSIMISM— POSITIVISM. 99 

pares the way for the ethical representation of the world, or the 
outcome of Schopenhauer's hard realism. Logically, and emotionally, 
he is a pessimist ; without belief in a personal God, attributing so-called 
providential government to an impersonal and necessary will, he 
muses in despair over existence, sees in history only the worst 
regulating principles, discovers nothing alleviating or redemptive in 
natural agencies, and mingles his meditations with the Buddhists, 
accepting the doctrine of nirvana, as the only final relief from a con- 
scious life. His philosophy, so Schwegler writes, is a "union of the 
transcendentalism of Kant and Fitche, the empiricism of Locke, the 
pantheism of Spinoza and Schelling, the idealism of Plato, and the 
pessimism of the Buddhists" — a conglomeration truly, with little 
of originality or independence of philosophical assertion. Pessimism 
is the first step downward from absolute idealism. 

Its very recent advocate is Hartmann, of Germany, who departed 
from Schopenhauer in the enlargement of philosophic distinctions, 
and the clearness of philosophic definitions. Hartmann says Schopen- 
hauer's Will can only be an efficient cause ; there must also be a final 
cause, which implies an act of the reason. The Will is an efficient but 
not final cause ; Reason is a final but not efficient cause ; therefore, 
the two, Will and Reason, constitute the substance and ground of all 
being. But the acting Reason is a mechanically acting, and there- 
fore, unconscious reason ; hence, the Absolute is the union of uncon- 
scious intelligence and the will in unconscious force. With Schopenhauer, 
God is blind, impersonal will ; with Hartmann, God is the 
unconscious force of reason and will ; hence, the world is badly 
constructed, and man is the victim of a hopeless government. 

How different this from Platonism ! How different from Descartes, 
Leibnitz, Kant, Jacobi, Fitche, Schelling, and Hegel! 

Comte introduces another retrograding phase of philosophy, called 
Positivism, whose logical termination is atheism. He achieved 
notoriety in suggesting that the mind in its natural development 
passes through three successive stages, as follows : 1. The theological, 
or fictitious ; 2. The metaphysical, or abstract ; 3. The positive, or 
scientific. Asserting that the mind unfolded in this order, it followed 
that it outgrew the theological or religious, and the metaphysical or 
philosophical, and attained in its higher development a positive or 
scientific state. Psychologists, however, immediately rejected this 
discrimination, it having been established that the mind grows in the 
reverse order, attaining to a normal theological condition last. Athe- 
istic as is the spirit of positivism, Comte admitted the necessity of 
religion, and actually prepared a creed and ordinances, but the pur- 
pose was ethical, not religious in the highest sense. Can philosophy 



100 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

go lower than pessimism and positivism? Reactions usually follow 
extremes. Comte has been overthrown ; Hartmann is without fol- 
lowers ; yet in these days of modern inquiry, it can not be said that 
philosophy is recovering an idealistic tone; or that it is solving the 
problem of the ultimate. 

Along with the materialistic and self-contradictory philosophic 
ideas of the early part of the nineteenth century there appeared an 
eclectic spirit which, prudently surveying the field, ventured to sug- 
gest a new basis for philosophic investigation. Rejecting materialism, 
it also parted company with theology, as such, and made psychology 
or the reason the starting-point of philosophic endeavor, a hopeful 
sign of progress as well as a barrier to the atheism of the period. 
This is Rationalism, or Eclecticism, V. Cousin, an able, eloquent, 
sincere investigator of the great problems of life, being its exponent. 
In insisting on the reason, or subjective experience, as the foundation 
of all investigation, he coincides with Socrates, who was the first to 
introduce the subjective method in philosophic pursuits ; in insisting 
on the infallibility or inspiration of the spontaneous reason we find a 
ground for fatal criticism, since even the spontaneous reason of man 
is supposed to be affected somewhat by his inherited degeneracy. 
Rationalism assigns to the reason hyper-functional powers. The objec- 
tion of Dr. B. F. Cocker that Cousin does not rely upon revealed 
truth, or the Scriptures, is not well taken, since philosophy under- 
takes to pilot itself without the aid of religion to the shores of the 
eternal. Guided by revealed religion, philosophy will have no 
trouble, but in that event the strength or weakness of philosophy, as 
such, will not be manifest. 

Rationalism, without its extremes, occupies a right footing, being 
preferable to idealism, and certainly is superior to the foggy atmos- 
phere of pessimism or positivism. The starting-point of materialism 
is nature ; of theology, God ; of rationalism, man. 

In historic order we have reached the so-called Associational 
school of psychologists, who, sensitive to the charge of atheism and 
quick to repel it, have advanced explanatory theories of the mind 
and its action which logically justify the unenviable accusation of 
materialism. The psychological principle of the ^school is that the 
laws of thought, which we distinguish by specific names, are reducible 
to one universal law, namely, association, without which the mind is 
inert and productionless. To John Stuart Mill and Alexander 
Bain, the one dead, the other living, the doctrine is indebted for 
advocates. Mr. Mill inherited the doctrine of utilitarianism through 
his father from Jeremy Bentham ; he was also most profoundly influ- 
enced by Dr. David Hartley, whose physiological explanation of 



THE ASS0C1ATIONAL SCHOOL. 101 

mental action deprived the mind of intuitional and original character. 
It is well known that the elder Mill very early determined to mold the 
son according to his philosophical theories, to give him no religious 
education, to foster in him no reverential sentiments, to make him 
just what he desired ; the son, therefore, was a singular character, a 
machine-made man ; and it is no wonder that his philosophy is faulty, 
inadequate, materialistic, and inherited, i. e., borrowed rather than 
original. In his published works J. S. Mill holds that knowledge is 
the product of sensation ; hence, phenomena alone are knowable ; 
being is unknowable. Thus far he had traveled along the familiar 
track of philosophy from the days of Aristotle, but he took a step in 
advance in his proclamation of causation as an example of succession 
in nature; that is, that there is no necessary connection between 
cause and effect, but only a sequence. This was destructive of all 
iEtiology, threw mystery over all the operations of nature, blotted 
out accepted conclusions of philosophy, and inaugurated the drift 
period in speculative thought. Foundations were shaken ; anchorage 
was impossible ; the ultimate could no longer be reached a posteriorly 
or by the frequented steps of causation. 

In keeping with this physical theory, he taught that the mind is a 
"series of feelings," or an association of emotions, without causal con- 
nection. Eliminating causation from the natural world, it was easy 
to eliminate it from mental activity, which conclusion became the 
essence of associationalism. 

The step to evolution, or the last type of modern philosophy, is a 
short one. Herbert Spencer is its sponsor. If one's education has 
any thing to do with one's philosophy, then in the fact that Spencer's 
education was largely confined to physical studies we find an explana- 
tion of the mechanical hypothesis of creation he finally adopted and 
has to the present hour emphasized. Respecting the universe, he 
holds that it is the product of evolutionary forces; respecting God, 
he holds that he is ignoscible, unthinkable ; respecting the human 
mind, he is an associationalist, teaching that consciousness is a nervous 
sensation and thought a product of organization. He distinguishes 
between the nature of mind, which is unknowable, and the phenom- 
ena of mind, which are knowable, affirming that there is a science, 
but not a philosophy, of mind. The process of evolution is expressed 
as the "redistribution of matter and motion," by which mental states 
are produced and succeed one another. The nervous structure is 
double-faced, being objective and subjective ; objective activity is un- 
knowable ; subjective experience, consisting of conscious or phenom- 
enal states, is recognized, and, therefore, knowable. Intellectual 
activity is refined nervousness. 



102 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Following this reduction of mental phenomena to nervous states, 
Mr. Spencer had little difficulty in pronouncing the limitations of 
human knowledge. Conceptions he divides into three classes, viz.: 
1. Complete; 2. Symbolic; 3. Pseud-ideas. On the complete and 
symbolic conceptions, inasmuch as they are knowable, positive 
science may securely rest; but such ideas as God, immortality, or re- 
ligions, or necessary moral truths, inasmuch as they are unknowable, 
are denominated pseud-ideas, to be entertained as speculations or ab-' 
stractions only. In these conclusions Spencer draws the curtains of 
midnight aroun'd us, and turns the earth away from the sun. To ig- 
nore necessary truths, as does Mr. Spencer, is as if one carrying a 
lighted lamp should forget about it and let it fall, occasioning an ex- 
plosion and consuming his person. To this it may be replied that 
Mr. Spencer's lamp is not lit, and there is no danger if he let it fall. 
Perhaps this is the trouble. Necessary, religious truths ought to 
flame in and around heart and intellect ; then the notion of pseud- 
ideas would be extinguished in the brilliant blaze of truth. The ob- 
server will discover that Spencer, forgetting necessary truth, confines 
himself to his conceptions of truths in general; but a genuine philos- 
ophy deals with the former and ignores the latter, or considers them as 
incidental forms. The philosophy of Herbert Spencer is sensational, 
negative; phenomenal, not ultra-phenomenal; dealing with appear- 
ances, not causes ; with matter, not mind ; with physical activity, not 
a personal God. 

Ethically, the philosophy is defective in contents and pernicious in 
effect, for if intellectual manifestation can be reduced to nervous 
action, moral emotions, convictions, aspirations, and sentiments may 
be considered a display of the nervous sensibilities. And so we find 
it. The ethics of Spencer is the sum of physiological, psychological, 
and sociological influences ; that is, the result of the suggestions of 
nature, the convenience and expediency of communities, the com- 
parison of wants, the study of the issues of virtue and vice. Ethical 
teaching is not grounded in philosophical, religious, or ultimate truth ; 
there is no immutable standard of right and wrong ; so said Epicurus ; 
so said Aristotle ; so echoes Spencer. In the language of Spencer, 
conduct is the adjustment of the inner relations of life to the outer 
relations, i. e., the world. Conduct is a struggle toward this adjust- 
ment ; if one succeed in realizing the adjustment, he has perfected 
his conduct; otherwise, he is a wreck. Success, then, or survival, is 
the standard of right. This is the ethical side of the physical theory 
of mind, the essence of the philosophy of Spencer, the latest expres- 
sion of the character of man. 

To omit all reference to American philosophers would be unjust 



CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 103 

to them as a class, and render this survey incomplete. Really there 
is no American philosophy, per se, but the ''Concord School" still 
exists, representing a form of Hegelianism, a phase of pantheism, 
and the nobler edition of Emersonianism. Perhaps the philosophy 
taught by the school should be characterized as ideal realism, a mix- 
ture of the high and low, carrying both sides of the great problems, 
and emphasizing to-day what seems to be in the ascendant, but at 
liberty to change to-morrow. In this we do it no injustice. 

Happily, we may now speak of a philosophy of an entirely differ- 
ent character from any of the preceding, the chief objection to it be- 
ing its theologic trend, or whether it is philosophic at all in its method 
and spirit. We refer to theological dogmatism, whose purpose is 
the vindication of the very problems which have exercised a control- 
ling influence on speculative thought, and whose solutions have not 
yet been wrought out in the name of philosophy. James Arminius 
and John Calvin properly represent the theologic school of dog- 
matics, who, assuming the Scriptures to be inspired of God, demon- 
strate by both a priori and a posteriori methods the existence of God, 
and interpret both nature and man as an easy task. The aid of rev- 
elation is not considered indispensable to philosophy ; but the day will 
dawn when philosophy will be warranted in appropriating all the aids 
at hand, religion being one of them. If dogmatic theology be re- 
jected as a philosophical conception, then surely there is room for a 
school of Christian philosophers, just as there has been room for 
atheistic and pessimistic philosophers ; that is, the philosopher may be 
justified in establishing theistic conclusions without peril to his repu- 
tation. To this the world is fast coming. Emerging from the philo- 
sophical wrecks is, what the ages have waited for, but which is, as 
yet, undeveloped, namely, a Christian philosophy, or the philosophy of 
being from the Christian standpoint. Lotze, of Germany, and Bowne 
and McCosh, of the United States, may be taken as the representa- 
tives of the religious element in philosophy, without which there 
is no true philosophy. Philosophy, without the pilotage of religion, 
runs into pessimism, atheism, materialism ; with it, there is trans- 
parency, because there is revelation. But, as this phase of philos- 
ophy will hereafter receive attention, we do no more at present than 
mention it. 

We have traveled a long distance from Thales to Lotze, having 
gone over mountains, crossed the seas, wandered through wildernesses 
of thought, tarried in schools and academies, looked up into the sky, 
down into the soul, and beyond all things, for the face of God. 
Philosophy is a weary and weird traveler, ever journeying on foot, 
provided only with scrip, crackers, and staff; a beggar, asking of 



104 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

every thing, but receiving doubtful answers and unsatisfactory aid. 
During this long period of twenty-five hundred years, philosophy has 
not found the ultimate ; the problem of being is still unsolved ; and 
though at times, as in Plato, it has gone up to Pisgah's heights, from 
which the Holy Land of thought was seen, it has, as in Mill, drifted 
toward the North Pole, and, as in Spencer, gone down to the center 
of the earth. In Plato, an eagle ; in Mill, a bear ; in Spencer, a mole. 
In these twenty-five centuries there have been progress as well as 
decline, approximate solutions, lacking only the full tide of inspira- 
tion to make them entirely correct, and give them complete and au- 
thoritative validity, as well as self-acknowledged or universally per- 
ceived failures. It can not, therefore, be said that the progress, 
whatever its character and extent, has been direct and methodical, or 
that it can be easily traced from system to system, or school to school, 
for it has receded and flowed like the tides, rising and falling with 
no uniformity, and under no visible law of development. Vico 
taught that history repeated itself, or that life revolved in a circle; 
Goethe taught that the world moved in spirals ; Hegel taught that the 
history of philosophy is a "united process," a gradual unfolding of 
principles, a constant advancement toward the truth. Reviewing the 
historic struggles of philosophy, one is almost ready to affirm that it 
is a repeating process, a circle of ideas; or, if progressive, that its 
method is spiral; but that its progress has been regular, each system 
an improvement on the preceding, each age nearer the truth than a 
former age, seems inconsistent with the facts. Progress is the law of 
nature, language, science, music, mind; as Cocker says, "the present, 
both in nature and history and civilization, is, so to speak, the aggre- 
gate and sum total of the past;" but philosophy has not followed the 
law of evolution, either in its general course or in its outcome, for 
idealism is superior to materialism, and Plato is a safer philosopher 
than Herbert Spencer. There has been no steady, uniform progress 
in philosophical discovery, nor even a gradual advancement toward a 
knowledge of the absolute and everlasting God. The line of progress, 
if we allow it at all, is a zigzag line, exceedingly irregular and un- 
satisfactory. Putting the eye on the historical order of philosophic 
development, we often see two or more systems opposed in their 
fundamental conceptions, as the "fire" philosophy of Heraclitus and 
the atomic theory of Democritus in ancient times, and the pantheism 
of Spinoza and the empiricism of Locke in modern times, arise almost 
simultaneously, the one not quenching the other, but modified by a 
future teacher and discoverer. The historical order is illogical ; the 
logical order is unhistorical. One system does not grow out of 
another. Each springs up like Jonah's gourd in the darkness, and 



ANCIENT SYSTEMS. 



105 



withers away because of its inner and excessive weaknesses, abomina- 
tions, and inaptitudes. 

By this we do not mean that there is no connection whatever 
among the various schools or systems of thought, for this would be 
to overlook the confessed relation of Socrates and Plato, Locke and 
Hume, Spencer and Hamilton, Fitche and Schelling, Schopenhauer 
and Hartmann, Hartley asd Mill. But, adopting Mill's interpreta- 
tion of causation, we say the connection of philosophical systems is 
not causal, but formal and accidental; the history thereof is the his- 
tory of succession, not of necessary relation. 

That this interpretation of the historic order of philosophy is 
correct, we place in columnar array the names of the principal 
philosophers of the ancient period, designating their systems, and the 
time of their birth, or the period when they flourished — a schedule 
of the entire history. 



Philosophers. 



Thales, . . . . 
Anaximander 
Anaximenes, 
Heraclitus, . 
Pythagoras, 
Zenophanes, 
Parmenides, 
Zeno, . . . 
Anaxagoras, 
Leucippus, . 
Democritus, 
Empedocles, 
Protagoras, 
Gorgias, . 
Socrates, . 
Plato, . . 
Aristotle, . 
Epicurus, 
Zeno, . . 
Arcesilaus, 



Period or Birth. 



B.C. 
B.C. 



B.C. 
B.C. 
B.C. 
B.C. 
B.C. 
B.C. 



640-550, 
610, . . 
529-480, 
503-420, 
605, . . 
616-516, 
536, . . 
500, . . 
500-428, 
500-400, 
460-357, 
440, . . 
440, . . 
427, . . 
469-399, 
430-347, 
384, . . 
342-270, 
340, . . 
316-241, 



Philosophy. 



Materialism, or the Physical Principle, 



Mathematical Principle. 

Idealism, or the Intelligent Principle. 



Mental Principle. 

Atomic Principle. 
« (< 

Eclecticism. 

Nescience. 

Idealism. 



Sensationalism, 
Epicureanism. 
Stoicism. 
Skepticism. 



The above is Grecian philosophy in outline, a zigzag line, truly, 
its systems unconnected, and its last state worse than the first. 
Beginning with a materialistic assumption, which changes its form 
and phraseology, but not its spirit, with every succeeding teacher, it 
rises to an incipient or anticipatory idealism in Pythagoras, attains 
to a one-sided or absolute idealism in the Eleatics, especially in Par- 
menides, assumes philosophic dignity in the nous or mental principle 
of Anaxagoras, and then, with melted wings, sinks down into the 
atomic theory, or another phase of materialism, of Democritus — the 



106 



PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 



atheism and chance-philosophy of Greece. Materialism, idealism, 
atheism, are the successive but irregular steps thus far of the early 
philosophy. 

Springing back like the released bow, it betakes itself again to 
idealism, reaching its profoundest culmination in Socrates and Plato, 
Socrates being the flower and Plato the fruit of a dialectical system 
that has never been surpassed. This is the summit, the highest 
water-mark of ancient philosophy, from which it descends first in 
Aristotle to empiricism, then in Zeno to spiritualistic pantheism, and 
in Epicurus to the logical termination of the mechanical hypothesis — 
atheism. From this is but a single step to skepticism, which the 
New Academy, in Arcesilaus, maintained. 

In these successive movements of the ancient systems it is impos- 
sible to discover an inner connection, or a periodic progress, or any 
type of evolution. Reactions, reformations, upheavals, disguises, inter- 
rogations, summits, abysses — these belong to the philosophic period of 
four hundred years, but an orderly or even final progress is not visible. 

Passing through the interregnum, which furnished little genuine 
philosophy, we arrive at the modern period ; a period full of inquiry, 
persevering in its research, teeming with results in systems without 
number, and opening new paths for the feet of future travelers. Its 
history may be tabulated about as follows : 



Philosopheks. 



Bacon, . . 
Boehme, 
Descartes, 
Spinoza, . 
Locke, . . 
Leibnitz, . 
Berkeley, 
Reid, . . 
Hume, . . 
Kant, . . 
Jacobi, . . 
Stewart, . 
Fitche, . . 
Schelling, 
Herbart, . 
Hegel, . . 
Brown, . . 
Hamilton, 
Schopenhauer, 
Comte, . . 
J. S. Mill 
Spencer, 
Hartmann, . 
Lotze, . . . 



Birth. 



A. D. 
A. D. 
A. D. 
A. D. 
A. D. 
A. D. 
A. D. 
A. D. 
A. D. 
A. D. 
A. D. 
A. D. 
A. D. 
A. D. 
A. D. 
A. D. 
A. D. 



I). 
D. 
I). 
D. 
D. 
D. 



A. D. 



1561, 
1575, 
1596, 
1632, 
1632, 
1646, 
1685, 
1710, 
1711, 
1724, 
1743, 
1753, 
1762, 
1775, 
1776, 
1770, 
1778, 
1788, 
1788, 
1798, 
1806, 
1820, 
1842, 
1817, 



Philosophy. 



Science. 

Mysticism. 

Dualism. 

Pantheism. 

Sensationalism. 

Idealism. 

Common Sense. 

Skepticism. 

Idealism. 

Faith-philosophy. 

Common Sense. 

Subjective Idealism. 

Objective _ " 

Sensationalism. 

Absolute Idealism. 

Representationism. 

Nescience. 

Pessimism. 

Positivism. 

Associationalism. 

Evolution. 

Pessimism. 

Monotheism. 



MODERN SYSTEMS. 107 

One has only to glance at this historic representation of modern 
philosophy to be able to decide whether it has regularly progressed or 
declined, and what its last state is compared with the first. Begin- 
ning with Bacon, it dealt chiefly with the facts and problems of natu- 
ral science, together with a review of the methods of reasoning, or 
dialectics. Bacon was a scientist, a pioneer, paving the way for 
philosophy, and really summoned it to its rightful tasks. Following 
him it appeared according to the above schedule. In Descartes it 
lost or did not find the idea of unity ; in Spinoza it lost God ; in 
Locke it declared for an empty mind ; over Leibnitz the idealistic 
spirit broods, and monadology is the result ; in Berkeley a form of 
Eleaticism reappears ; in Hume the mind is without recognition. Re- 
actions follow, and Kant strikes for idealism. There is a rising 
again ; the wings begin to grow. Jacobi declares for faith in God ; 
Fitche, Schelling, and Hegel wheel into the direct line of idealism, 
ascending higher than their predecessors, but compelled to halt if not 
beat a retreat. Idealism broke its bow by over-straining. 

Idealism lost caste, being followed rapidly by the pessimism of 
Schopenhauer, the positivism of Comte, the associationalism of Mill, 
and the evolution of Spencer, checked only a trifle by the intermediate 
systems of Hamilton, Stewart, and Reid. 

Spanning the period from the idealism of Descartes to the evolu- 
tion of Spencer, and recollecting the manifold forms of pantheism, 
sensationalism, skepticism, idealism, pessimism, and atheism, which it 
has assumed, we can not concede a regular order in philosophic his- 
tory, nor is progress noticeable, save in the general results of research 
and the study of mind. Modern philosophy ends as did ancient 
philosophy, with sensationalism, a physical conception of the universe, 
and an atheistic sentiment respecting its Maker. In these results 
modern has repeated the story of ancient philosophy, only varying 
the form. The old philosophy was the archetype of the new, the 
ancient of the modern ; there is little new in the new. Eleaticism was 
the forerunner of Idealism ; Pythagoras was the Descartes of his age ; 
Parmenides repeats himself in Spinoza ; Zeno is transformed in Hegel. 
This is not progress. 

But the end is not yet. Such words as pessimism, atheism, evo- 
lution, ring in our ears, disturbing our slumber with nightmare, and 
filling life's activity with anxiety and fear ; but the new words, soul, 
God, immortality, heaven, taken up by Lotze, have gone out into all 
the world to inspire the sons of men. Are they deceptions, or are 
they real? We shall see. 



108 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE PROVINCE OK PHILOSOPHY. 

IN the Loggia of Raphael, in the Vatican at Kome, are four pic- 
tures, which the visitor is sure to observe with considerable inter- 
est, both because the artist produced them at the early age of twenty- 
five years, and also because they represent the departments of theology, 
poetry, philosophy, and justice. One has no difficulty in finding 
"philosophy," which rises as a vaulted hall, with outside marble steps, 
on which sits lazy Diogenes, clothed in a single garment ; in the hall 
Plato and Aristotle are conversing, Plato pointing upward, and 
Aristotle pointing forward. Raphael's conception of the historic 
career of philosophy, and, equally, of its prophetic mission, is per- 
haps as correct as any that has had expression, either in art, or 
history, or philosophy. Diogenes represents the slow, plodding 
thinker, careless of this world, being occupied with thoughts that the 
multitude do not understand, or in which they have invested but a 
little interest ; Plato represents its highest aspirations ; Aristotle, - its 
spirit of progress. 

Has philosophy a mission ? Is there a field for the philosopher ? 
Lewes insists that its mission has been fulfilled, and its reign in 
thought, research, and history, is over. Acknowledging that it ini- 
tiated positive science, he declares that positive science has supplanted 
it, and that philosophy must disappear. Reviewing the past, he sees 
that the one has made no progress in the study of its problems, while 
the other is revealing facts and the laws that govern the material 
universe. For effete, worn-out philosophical speculations, he substi- 
tutes the facts of positive science, declaring its empire established. 
Prejudging the subject in this way, he undertakes to write a history 
of philosophy, making good use of the facts as he finds them, and 
turning them against the citadel itself. 

Mr. Lewes, however, is not supreme authority, notwithstanding 
the positive discrimination he makes between philosophy and science, 
and his evident preference for the latter. When he writes that 
philosophy initiated science, he forgets that Thales was a natural 
philosopher, i. e., a scientist before he became a speculatist. Physics 
preceded metaphysics. So in modern times Bacon, the scientist, pre- 
ceded Descartes, the philosopher. Science has given birth to 
philosophy, not philosophy to science. The declaration that there 



RELATIONS OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 109 

has been no progress in speculation and that ' ' philosophy moves in 
the same endless circle," is more than an assumption ; it is a perver- 
sion of fact. Mind, matter, and God are better understood to-day 
because of philosophical inquiry ; better understood negatively, 
perhaps, than affirmatively, but it is Platonic to consider all sides of 
a subject before announcing a conclusion. The final conclusions of 
philosophy have not been reached ; the partial conclusions heralded 
are in some respects unsatisfactory, disturbing and incomplete. The 
declaration that philosophy is neglected and abandoned is about as 
true as would be the assertion that science, poetry, art, and religion are 
neglected. England rarely produces a philosophical mind ; Germany 
is still able to furnish a philosophical thinker. The scientific spirit 
is always productive of the philosophic spirit ; and this inquiring age 
must produce scientists and philosophers. The facts of science are 
the materials of the philosopher. Philosophy is impossible without 
science. The universe is the shadow of an infinite thought, to be de- 
ciphered by the slow process of philosophic inquiry. Understanding 
the universe the infinite thinker is understood. This is the process 
of thought ; hence, Cousin is correct in affirming that philosophy is 
last in the order of thought, overturning the assertion of Lewes 
that it was historically first. Inasmuch as philosophy is last, it 
has a future, waiting for science to do its duty as an investigator 
of facts and laws, and it can not go forward until science has pre- 
pared the way for it. Its future, therefore, is a contingency ; it fol- 
lows science. 

Mr. Lewes again contends that philosophy is engaged in a search 
after the impossible I Essences, causes can never be known. This is 
the dictum of modern science ; but is it not presumptive in a 
scientist to declare that causes are unknowable because science can 
not and does not undertake to demonstrate them? It is the old 
spirit of scientific antagonism to higher knowledge, a settlement of 
the limitations of human inquiry by the ipse dixit of a class whose 
business it is not to go beyond phenomena, who can not by their 
methods ascertain causes. 

In his statement that philosophy proceeds altogether from a 
priori premises, he asserts what can not be maintained, for all 
methods are open to philosophy. 

Schlegel, having a scheme of his own to defend, pronounces the 
philosophy of the schools unintelligible, and advises an abandonment of 
the l ' fine-spun webs of dialectics " for a more practical philosophy of life. 
The objection is not well taken, for, with few exceptions, such as the ab- 
stract ideas of Anaximander and the monad ology of Leibnitz, the stu- 
dent has no difficulty in separating one system from another, or in detail- 



110 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ing the tenets of the philosophers from the Ionic school to Emerson. 
Besides, such an objection,, if fatal in its content, will dispense with 
much that passes for science, which in these days utters unintelligible 
theories without number, and is always incomplete in its data and 
uncertain in its conclusions. That the history of philosophy abounds in 
systems inharmonious and contradictory, no one will deny ; but science, 
transitional, progressive, ever finding new facts, ever discovering new 
laws, must be open to the same objection. The severest charge against 
philosophy is that in its aberrations it resembles science, building up 
and tearing down, enlightening to-day but confusing to-morrow, and 
so leaving the world in perplexity, mystery, and misery. Science 
furnishes the example, and philosophy imitates it. 

Antisthenes, the Cynic, in eulogy of philosophy boasted that it 
had enabled him to live with himself, which is the very highest end of 
life. The Cynic compromised the force of his statement by leading 
an impure and worthless life, but in proportion as it contributes to 
right principles it lays the foundation for right living. 

Schelling observed that the end of philosophy is to make an in- 
telligence out of nature, or a nature out of intelligence; succeeding 
in doing either, and especially in doing both, it will justify its place 
in history. 

At all events, the relation of philosophical pursuits to the practical 
life of man and the world's intelligence is intimate enough to secure 
them a place in the curriculum of the world's studies and activities. 

Some Christian thinkers have innocently espoused the belief that 
inspired truth is all-sufficient in itself, and that what is not revealed 
can not be known, and, therefore, philosophical inquiry touching the 
unrevealed is forbidden by the terms of revelation itself. Philosophy 
aspires not to the character of a revelation ; but, like theology, it 
does venture its explanations of what is revealed. It deals with 
revelations, cosmological, psychological, spiritual, and written revela- 
tions, attempting to harmonize them in the unity of thought and being, 
in all of which it goes no farther than the revelations themselves. 
Its purpose is to understand revelation. It does not reveal, only as 
explanation is revelation. 

This brings us definitely to consider what is philosophy in its 
generic spirit and function, without a knowledge of which it will be 
impossible to decide if there is any room for it. Dividing and sub- 
dividing after the manner of Plato, we should say philosophy is not 
dialectic ; or mathematics ; or psychology ; or metaphysic ; or science ; 
or religion ; not these taken singly or wholly, but embracing a not 
inconsiderable part of all. Aristotle called metaphysic "first phi- 
losophy," and physics " second philosophy." The " second philosophy" 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL METHOD. Ill 

we relegate to the physicists. Prof. Bowne assigns to psychology 
the task of explaining the genesis of ideas, reserving to philosophy 
the duty of explaining the grounds of belief. It is not clear that the 
distinction is valid or that the tasks of psychology and philosophy are 
sufficiently apportioned ; for philosophy deals with origins ; the origin 
of ideas, not the ideas themselves; the origin of beliefs, not beliefs 
alone. Psychology is an assistant to, not a usurper of, philosophy. 
The invalidity of the distinction, or the separateness of the tasks 
Prof. Bowne assigns to these departments will appear if the philo- 
sophical method of investigation be considered. Two methods obtain 
in philosophy, viz. : the psychological and the empirical. Aristotle, 
Locke, Condillac, Hume, and the association alists, adopting the em- 
pirical method, constitute that class of philosophers known as mate, 
rialists; while Socrates, Plato, Kant, Cousin, Fitche, and Hegel, 
adopting the psychological method, are known as idealists, rationalists, 
or metaphysicians. In recent years both methods have been adopted 
by the same philosopher, creating a school of empirical psychologists, 
represented by Alexander Bain ; but it is the spirit of empiricism 
overshadowing psychology, and not harmonizing with it. Its pur- 
pose is the destruction of psychology. Prof. Bowne seems opposed 
to the empirico-psychological method, as preliminary to, or an aid in, 
metaphysical inquiry ; but while the opposition to both methods 
joined together is not the same as opposition to either method taken 
by itself, he impresses the reader that the psychological method is in- 
sufficient in itself for metaphysics. Cousin, however, has demon- 
strated the insufficiency of the empirical method, and exalted the 
other. Both methods, therefore, are deprived of application in 
philosophy. 

But if psychology is justified in undertaking one of the tasks of 
philosophy, the psychological method may be properly appropriated 
by philosophy, without damage to the former, and with some advantage 
to the latter. The tasks and methods of psychology border closely on 
those of philosophy ; but, beyond those of the former, the latter 
must finally go if it work out an independent mission. A point of 
separation must finally be reached. 

In like manner, philosophy is not dialectic, but dialectical; nor is 
it science, but scientific; nor religion, but religious. Its methods are 
those of religion, science, psychology, and dialectics; it searches the 
truth, now by a priori, and then by a posteriori methods; like science, 
it may employ the empirical method; like psychology, the rational; 
like theology, the theistic ; that is, it may start from nature, mind, 
or God, or from the known or the unknown; it has no method of its 
own, as distinguished from these. Hence, its alliance with all things. 



112 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Kindred to science and religion in method, its aims are specific, being 
above the one and alongside those of the other. Without a difference 
of aim, it is without a reason for being. The justification of philoso- 
phy is that it has in hand a problem which the scientist does not 
admit into his realm, and which the theologian can not solve without 
his aid. The specific task of philosophy, therefore, remains to be stated. 

Schwegler says, to philosophize is to reflect, but the subject of 
reflection should be included. Socrates insisted on the value of 
definitions, and was skillful himself in separating the accidental from 
the essential elements of things. To define philosophy is the first 
duty. A variety of definitions the philosophers have made, each an 
approximate statement of the trend of philosophical discovery. To 
say that it is the "science of wholes," or the science of the absolute, 
is not a bad definition, save that it reduces philosophy to a science, 
which, however, ought to insure its favorable reception among the 
scientists ; to say that it is an inquiry into realities, or a search for 
causes, or a feeling after being, is an improved representation of its 
purpose. Schlegel defines philosophy to be the "science of conscious- 
ness alone," which leads into the rationalism of Cousin. Plato states 
that the "end of philosophy is the intuition of unity," an abstract 
definition, which, thoroughly analyzed, will be found to contain the 
true idea of philosophy ; but its occult meaning renders it unsatis- 
factory as a definition. The definition in this case must be defined. 
According to Epicurus, philosophy is an activity related to human 
happiness. The definition is practical, not philosophical. According 
to Diogenes Laertius, Pythagoras was the "first person who invented 
the term philosophy, and who called himself a philosopher." Dissat- 
isfied with the name wisdom, which had been applied to scientific and 
metaphysical pursuits, he originated the word philosophy to express 
the love of wisdom, or a state of mind that delighted in philosophic 
speculation. The word, as thus used, is faulty in that it does not 
signify the kind of wisdom to be loved or pursued ; it may include a 
love of lower or higher truth ; if the former, it would be science ; if 
the latter, philosophy. As a word for the pursuit of the highest 
truth, it is wanting in explicitness ; still, as it has been baptized by 
so worthy a thinker as Pythagoras, it should retain its place in specu- 
lation, and signify the pursuit of the highest truth. 

What is the highest truth ? This must be settled before the duty 
of pursuit can be enforced. The aim of philosophy has been to get 
back to first principles, without exactly knowing what they are, and 
without knowing the shortest route to their discovery. The struggle 
of every thinker since the days of Plato, the mental travail of every 
investigator, metaphysical and scientific, has been to penetrate 



PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY. 113 

through the visible into the invisible. The universal faith that the 
limit of knowledge has not been reached stimulates every seeker to 
press on, in the hope that he may be able to open a new door into 
the infinite mysteries, and declare the last secret solved. The effort 
to reach original principles, powers, or personalities, to give them 
name, describe their form, analyze their nature, is stupendous in 
itself, and, when sincerely made, is heroic and deserving of applause. 
No easy task, it is confessed, is his who in this day takes up a prob- 
lem still unsolved, and which modern science has the effrontery to 
declare insoluble. True philosophy, embracing the fundamentals in 
the dark, sets its face pastward, depthward, and bidding good-bye to 
the visible, plunges into the invisible as the diver into the Arabian 
Sea, and is lost in the splendors of its own explorations. 

That there are first principles, or highest truths, must be con- 
ceded, for not only is philosophy impossible without such concession, 
but also the universe can neither be explained nor maintained with- 
out them. The idea of substratum,* source, foundation, can not be 
repudiated without danger to whatever is ; belief in originals is not 
more the imperative of consciousness than the imperative of science. 
The existent has been produced by another existent, or it produced 
itself; from this alternative there is no escape. Self -existence, or 
caused existence — this is the final form of the philosophical problem. 

A cedar receiving collateral support from air, sunshine, moisture, 
is yet dependent upon soil, and can not flourish without it. An im- 
perfect scheme will content itself with an examination of the collat- 
eral supports or adjuncts of life, but a genuine philosophy seeks the 
basal elements, without which the collateral elements would be power- 
less. Neither the drapery of existence, nor the flourishing and mag- 
nificent material forms about us, nor the visible realities which attract 
the eye, are the only or chief objects of philosophic inquiry; but 
back of all these, back of all that is, are the sources, the images, the 
originating and manifesting forces. The uncovering of the founda- 
tions, the exposing of the olden mysteries, the compelling the First 
to answer the Second — this is the first, the last, interrogation of 
genuine philosophy. Plato more clearly than before declares the 
purpose of philosophy to be, "that it may ascend as far as the un- 
conditioned, and, having grasped this, may then lay hold of the 
principles next adjacent to it, and so go down to the end, termi- 
nating in forms." The unconditioned; the conditioned — these philos- 
ophy must interrogate and examine, and then report the results. If 
it be thought that the realm of philosophy is enlarged by this epitome 
of its purpose beyond the possibility of a thorough survey of all it 
contains or proposes, and that to restrict it to the sensible or phe- 

8 



114 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

nomenal will be in keeping with the spirit of the age, we reply that 
we have neither assigned arbitrary boundaries to it, nor broken down 
old and existing limitations of former philosophic purposes. Philoso- 
phy itself, not the writer, establishes its own boundaries, expunges 
all horizons from the mental vision, and points to the illimitable as 
the theater of the mind's free activity, as the field of the inquiring 
spirit of man. In the days of Athenian splendor, its chief purpose 
was an exploration of the illimitable ; but nineteenth century philoso- 
phy has arrogantly erected barriers around the philosophic spirit, 
muttering, as to oceanic tides, "thus far and no farther." Beyond 
the sensible, the phenomenal, the explainable, the modern investigator 
proposes not even to attempt to go, and balustrades thought with 
rock and ocean and sky and nerves and molecules. 

In respect to boundaries, modern thought contrasts with the phi- 
losophy of Plato's day. The latter grasped the conception of the 
genesis of things, but could not actualize it in a philosophic form ; 
the former repudiates the idea* of genesis in self-subsisting, original 
creative spirit, to which both consciousness and religion, both nature 
and history, most surely point. The Hellenic spirit was a pioneer; 
the modern spirit is an heir to all the revelations of the history of 
humanity and the developments of religion. One preceded inquiry ; 
the other follows it. One fore-glimpsed the unknown God ; the other 
refuses recognition of the known God. One, beginning at the bottom, 
ascended for a moment the perilous heights of vision, only to fall 
back into darkness again ; the other, born near the summits, descends 
into abysses of doubt and shadow, reversing the order of the acade- 
micians. The one soared from the earth; the other has fallen from 
the heavens. Plato is the one ; Lucifer is the other. 

As to its realm, philosophy is quite independent of the philosopher, 
just as botany is quite independent of the botanist. His task is to 
explore the province as he finds it ; he can not construct boundaries, 
and define the frontier of his inquiry, for the field is the infinite. 
If he is narrow in conception it is because he has gone to the tops 
of the mountains, or planted himself in the stars, the outer courts of 
the invisible. What he must do is to approach the invisible Center 
of all things, inquiring for his steps in the fields of creation, and 
rising beyond all into the very presence of the power that made all. 
To that Center he must go, and from it he must start in his quest of 
truth. Neither ancient nor modern philosophy fixed their point of 
departure from the great Center — the one because it could not, the 
other because it would not — nor has the objective point of the latter 
been the discovery of primary truth, or the foundation of existence. 
A strange perversion of philosophy, indeed, which neither starts from 



PURPOSE OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. 115 

nor returns to the first, the outlying, eternal Cause of all things! 
Yet to this philosophy must come if it retain its name and place in 
the esteem of mankind. 

The philosophic pursuit implies a specific purpose. Its general 
purpose must be absorbed by the special. Broadly speaking, the 
successive systems of philosophic inquiry, which both ancient and 
modern times have produced, may be interpreted as so many attempts 
of the human mind to unravel eternal mysteries, to explore incom- 
prehensible realities, and definitely to fix the limits of human knowl- 
edge. In a narrower. sense, it appears as if philosophy has had, for 
its animating principle, the determination of the infinite, and a study 
of the exact relations of the infinite and the finite, together with the 
cognate questions they suggest. While seeking to examine the foun- 
dations of the universe, it covets also a knowledge of remotest being, 
or the ultimate facts of existence. This is tearing away the veil that 
separates the natural from the supernatural, and discovering the in- 
visible — a high undertaking, but not impious. From the days of 
Thales until now, philosophy has been characterized by a purpose to 
ascertain the unknown, exhibiting in its pursuit no trifling or chaotic 
spirit, but an intellectual zeal in harmony with the high end that in- 
spired it. Ancient philosophy sought only in darkness. Unaided 
and alone, it sallied forth in quest of truth, but failed to find it. 

Again, Plato says: "The problem of philosophy is, for all that 
exists conditionally, to find a ground unconditioned and absolute." 
Involved in this search of the unconditioned is a knowledge of the 
conditioned, implying a wide range of intellectual research, and a de- 
vout comprehension of the universe in all its manifold relations. 
Plato understood the problem, therefore. Among the Ionic philos- 
ophers the inquiry was of a similar nature, a seeking of the original 
cause of things ; but, locating the cause in the things themselves, 
they sunk into materialism. From Homer's theology of the gods as 
the originators of the universe, they turned with dissatisfaction, and, 
in a reactionary mood, attributed to the physical elements, fire, air, 
and water, certain creative powers and impulses, ending in their de- 
personification, thus exchanging mythological beings for visible forces, 
as the first causes of phenomena. Whether in this there was an ad- 
vance many may hesitate to allow ; but it was the death-knell of 
mythology as a philosophical or religious explanation of the physical 
universe, and rendered in this respect excellent service to the cause 
of truth. In this vibration from Platonic idealism to Ionic material- 
ism, the extremes of ancient philosophic research are manifest ; but 
modern philosophy swings between the same extremes, seemingly un- 
able to go beyond them. 



116 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Looking to conclusions alone, ancient philosophy asserts the un- 
conditioned, modern philosophy the conditioned ; in its highest mood 
the former was theistic, in its lowest mood the latter is atheistic. 
Between the theistic and the atheistic conception of the universe ; 
between a supernaturally-caused and a self-originating universe, 
philosophy must at last decide, for the truth is in one or the other. 
To creation's picture there is a background, which is reflected in light 
and shadow upon the picture itself. The Causer is not in the fore- 
ground, but in the background, blushing over his works, and suffus- 
ing them with the hues of his unseen face. To reveal the unseen 
Causer is the manifest duty of philosophy. It must fearlessly tread 
along the boundaries of creation, touching the edges of the infinite, 
and grasping the hand of the eternal ; this is its province, or it has 
nothing to do. Plainly is it seen that its functional career is above 
that of science. Pure science concerns itself with facts, laws, methods ; 
philosophy with causes and ends. Science is fact-seeking; philosophy, 
principle-seeking. The one deals with experience; the other, with 
thought. Science embraces physiology, psychology, astronomy, chem- 
istry, botany, zoology ; philosophy inquires for the originating prin- 
ciple of all things. The province of the one is the visible ; that of 
the other, the invisible. Science may conclude that the First Cause 
is undiscoverable ; philosophy must discover such cause. 

In this assignment of specific business to philosophy, it will be 
observed that it trenches upon the sphere of theology, with this dif- 
ference, however: theology is the concretion of divine truths, as 
found in verbal revelations ; philosophy is the concretion of similar 
truths, as found in physical revelations. Between science and re- 
ligion it is the bridge. To science, the Causer is unknowable ; to 
philosophy, knowable; to religion, known. 

Is it the prerogative of philosophy to doubt, and that of religion 
to believe? Pyrrho introduced the spirit of doubt in ancient philos- 
ophy, which was rather a contamination than an inspiration. His 
followers were called skeptics, and " ephetics," i. e., men who sus- 
pended judgment and never reached a conclusion. The spirit of 
doubt dominated at the introduction of modern philosophy, Bacon 
refusing to accept scientific data until he had investigated them, and 
Descartes refusing all philosophical principles until he had demon- 
strated them. Hume created the aphorism, "To doubt is the sum 
of knowledge." Hence, philosophy is branded as the doubter ; but 
it is a seeker, also. It doubts in order to seek. Doubt is the stim- 
ulus of investigation. Montaigne's skepticism was intended to be the 
inspiration of inquiry. The inspiring doubt of Bacon and Descartes 
has given place to the dead doubt of Spencer, Bain, and the whole 



THE INFINITE INCOGNIZABLE. 117 

brood of empiricists and materialists. Under this load philosophy- 
staggers. 

Jacobi, a " faith-philosopher," held that Spinozism, or a pantheistic 
conception of the universe, must be the issue of pure philosophizing ; 
but it is clear that the result may be neither atheism nor pantheism, but 
theism. In examining the philosophical contests of the last three 
centuries, however, we must confess that philosophy has been unsuc- 
cessful in its attemps to vindicate the existence of an original Causer ; 
and, instead of rising to the religious height of the known, it has 
fallen down to the scientific level of the unknowable, and declares 
the Causer not only unknowable but unthinkable. 

Is the ultimate incognizable by philosophy? Its own melancholy 
answer, echoing through history, is that it can not decipher the all- 
mystery, it can not measure the infinite, its plumb-line is too short for 
the depths of being. Accepting this account of itself, it furnishes a 
strong argument for the necessity of a supernatural revelation of God, 
for if it is not in the power of the human mind to conceive of the 
original Causer, and announce him in his attributes, if man can not 
predetermine the existence of a Creator, either ignorance or revela- 
tion of a Creator must ensue. Kelying upon itself, philosophy gravi- 
tates to ignorance, proclaiming the idea of a first cause speculative 
and beyond demonstration. From the declaration of an unknown 
and unknowable God, the step is a short one to the declaration that 
mind and matter are beyond the pale of knowledge. Such step it 
has already taken, in that it has declared that phenomena only may 
be known. It is a question, however, if it requires more mind to 
know things than phenomena, to know substance than qualities, to 
know being than attributes, for there are no qualities without sub- 
stance, and no attributes without being. The problem of Plato the 
nineteenth century unhesitatingly declares can not be solved. In its 
latest aspects, philosophy seems incapable of any thing except to pull 
down the temple of truth on its own head. Making the unproven 
assumption that God, mind, and matter are unknowable, it has de- 
generated into a series of ignorant platitudes, as the apology for its 
imbecility, and wrestles no longer with the inquiry of the ancients. 
Modern philosophy is the philosophy of ignorance, intellectual agnosti- 
cism, nineteenth century charlatanry. The hint of Shakespeare that 
matter presents a " false seeming," or it is not what it seems to be, 
has been converted into the dictum of philosophy, and all things, not 
excepting the first cause, have been clothed with masks. 

Kant, thundering opinions that have shaken more than one system 
from its pedestal , originated the philosophic aphorism that the ' ' thing- 
in-itself," which is objective, can not be known, but only phenomena 



118 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

and their relations may be known. Implying a noumenon, an objective 
somewhat, it is phenomenon only we can know ; it is the noumenon, 
however, we are most anxious to know. To limit knowledge to phe- 
nomena is to limit inquiry to superficial ends, and to paralyze the 
spirit of pursuit, for it is the somewhat, and not the manifestations 
thereof, the mind seeks to understand. The " thing-in-itself," how- 
ever, is only a captious phrase, or, as Prof. Bowne pronounces it, 
one of the "insanities of idealism." 

As if with a purpose to exceed Kant in absurd philosophizing, 
Keid announces that, not only are phenomena alone known, but also 
that they are known incompletely, and, of necessity, superficially. 
Upham joins the philosophers in the general view of the incompetency 
of the human mind to penetrate the nature or understand the sub- 
stance of matter, for he says, "we are altogether ignorant of the sub- 
jective or real essence of matter ; our knowledge embraces merely its 
qualities or properties, and nothing more." Here the delusion of 
separateness between properties and substance, or belonging and be- 
ing, has outspoken representation. Herbert Spencer voices in clearest 
tones the creed of modern philosophy in the statement that knowledge is 
relational, not absolute. Agreeing with predecessors and contemporaries 
that phenomena only are knowable, he imposes limitation on the 
knowledge of phenomena by reducing it to a cognition of relations. 
The real in matter and spirit is absolutely unknowable. 

This is modern philosophy — the philosophy of cultivated self-com- 
placent, self-atoning ignorance. The effort of three thousand years 
to open a pathway for the human mind toward the infinite results in 
the paralyzing conviction that fore-glimpses of God, except through 
meager manifestations, and these expressive only of relations, are im- 
possible. Forever closed to man's best gaze is the infinite. The 
ascertainment by any philosophical process, or a demonstration of the 
existence of a First Cause and an acquaintance with his attributes, is 
declared null and void by the moderns. To mankind, the colossal 
ultimate must be, if not a myth, a stupendous, unthinkable, unex- 
plainable mystery, to be forgotten as an empty abstraction, to be 
eliminated from human history, and no longer to constitute a force in 
religion. To this conclusion does the "guarded or qualified material- 
ism" of modern thinkers lead. 

To reverse this conclusion is the specific business of philosophy. 
The problem of ontology is its first problem, which, once solved, pre- 
pares the way for the solution of all other problems. To refuse to 
grapple with the problem of the unconditioned is a sign of cowardice 
or imbecility ; to go forward is neither irreverence nor presumption. 
Just what the philosophic inquirer may finally discover by a persistent 



CONCEPTIONS OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 119 

search after the infinite, whether he will find God or merely find 
proofs of God, it is too soon to determine ; no one can affirm in ad- 
vance of discovery what will be discovered. It is a plunge into the 
unknown, with a faith that it will be less unknown, though not com- 
pletely known, after the plunge than before. "The office of philos- 
ophy," says Mansel, "is not to give us a knowledge of the absolute 
nature of God, but to teach us to know ourselves and the limits of 
our faculties." This is a specific limitation of philosophic research 
into humanity, forbidding the higher inquiry into ontology. The 
" office of philosophy" is to find out what it can both concerning God 
and man, and to restrict it to one is a very incomplete view of what 
ought to be done. It is a surrender of the question before a begin- 
ning has been made. A knowledge of God will lead to a knowledge 
of man ; a knowledge of man will be helpful to a knowledge of God ; 
they are reciprocal, not antagonistic. Moreover, the outside universe, 
or the conditioned world, is a testimony to the infinite ; what the tes- 
timony is, to what extent we can read it and understand it, and 
whether a conception of the infinite based on natural revelations, the 
oldest in point of time, will be sufficient, or at least helpful, in a final 
conception of the infinite, must in its place and time have due 
consideration. 

The final conception of the unconditioned is, therefore, complex, 
partaking of a certain apriorism, or sense of the infinite, which is the 
product of the infinite itself, the testimony of human consciousness, 
and the testimony of the physical universe, a trinity of proofs result- 
ing in a unity of notion, or the abstract idea of an infinite and un- 
conditioned personality. Surely such glimmerings of the infinite the 
philosophic spirit may observe, and, observing, it may decide some 
things respecting the infinite. To know the infinite is to know God. 
Mansel, discriminating entirely too finely, says, "men may believe in 
an absolute and infinite without in any proper sense believing in 
God ;" but such a belief in an absolute is a pure abstraction. The idea 
of the infinite is the idea of God. It may be an incomplete idea, a 
superstitious idea, but it is a species of theism inseparable from the idea 
itself. When the thought seizes the notion of an absolute, it expands 
into a theistic conception, either by virtue of the idea itself or the 
tendency of the mind to go in that direction. A close analysis of the 
genesis of the idea of the infinite will bring to light the fact that the 
idea itself, lodged in mind, is self-expansive. It is not exactly the 
"God-consciousness" of Schleiermacher, but an a priori unfolding of 
the idea-divine in the mind, independently of mental process or 
rational deduction. This apriorism, or primary output of the infinite 
by its own spirit, is the legitimate demonstration of the existence of 



120 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the infinite, which philosophy is bound to regard. "The manifesta- 
tion of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal," says Paul. 
He is in the world, and always has been. He was in Socrates ; he is 
in the heathen. The universal search is for the infinite spirit, which, 
if found at all, must first be found, not in man, nor in nature, but 
outside of both, as inherent, complete, absolute, and as only the more 
maturely reflected by both. This a priori conception of God is extra- 
transcendental, but it is required by the philosophic spirit. God in 
man is one mode of manifestation ; God in nature is another ; but 
God manifest in spirit is the highest manifestation. To deal with the 
highest is the first duty. The spirit of the infinite is abroad and may 
be found. What the infinite is becomes a secondary question in phi- 
losophy, not unimportant, however; perhaps, in practical life, it is 
more important even than the first. 

It is enough, however, that philosophy may detect the infinite 
spirit, since the infinite is a self-acting, self-manifesting spirit. In- 
accessible he is in his own region, but not without manifestation in 
our sphere. The condition of spirit is activity ; activity implies 
manifestation ; manifestation may be by direct methods, or indirect, 
that is, through the forms of consciousness, or the forms of matter. 

Of the scintillations of the infinite in human consciousness, or the 
reflection of God in man, the proofs are not wanting, they are not 
obscure. This reflection of the infinite we denominate a maturer re- 
flection than that of pure spirit, since it is within our reach, and 
susceptible of a partial analysis. The aprioristic proof of God is a 
sensible revelation of his spirit ; but it is not a full revelation of his 
character. This is the next demand. The testimony of the human 
consciousness to the existence of the infinite, is at the least assuring, 
and as to the character of God it speaks to some purpose. The 
origin of consciousness is not now in dispute ; its revelations alone 
concerns us. In the depths of human consciousness Cousin clearly 
foresaw the signs of the infinite, tracing them in those intuitional 
forms which constitute the frame-work of rational psychology. Reason, 
like the magnet, points in one direction only ; unerringly does it in- 
dicate the infinite. By reason, Cousin means the universal, un taught, 
primary race-consciousness of God which no degradation can smother 
and no ignorance annihilate. Descartes projecting the psychological 
method had an apt follower in Cousin, who emphasized the method 
beyond its author in the proof of the existence of God. The sub- 
stratum of thought is the infinite ; the foundations of conscious exist- 
ence are laid in the absolute. " In him we live;" in us he lives also. 
The contents of the consciousness, or of reason may be embraced in 
at least three terms, which understood in their relations, may be 



A BELA TED INFINITE. 1 21 

finally reduced to a single term. Without education, without 
development, the deeply laid reason of man concedes, recognizes, and 
in its spontaneities operates with, the correlated ideas of the infinite 
and the finite, unity and multiplicity, causation and its consequence ; 
with the inevitable relation of one to the other ; and any apparent after- 
acquirement of these ideas is but the expansion of ideas original with 
the human consciousness. The condition of consciousness is the con- 
stant but unstudied recognition of finite and infinite, from which may 
be predicted the existence of both. A dependent pair of ideas is 
suggestive of the independent existence of the objective forms they 
represent. So the intuitional thought of finite and infinite is a 
proclamation of the existence of both in objective forms and relations. 
This much the consciousness affirms if it affirm any thing. How it affirms 
any thing is not involved in the investigation ; that it affirms the in- 
finite what is called the race-consciousness will allow. And in 
affirming the infinite, it immediately affirms it in relation which is a 
step toward the solution of character. Pure, unrelated spirit, 
manifesting itself by pressure only, may not be analyzed ; but pure 
related spirit, active and manifested in action, i. e., in relation, the 
mind may the more clearly discern, and to a degree comprehend. 
Hence, a related infinite is preferable to an unrelated infinite. An 
unrelated infinite does not exist; it is an abstraction, and philosophy 
is unphilosophical in so far as it confines itself to the unconditioned. 
The related infinite is a true philosophical infinite, which the rational 
spirit in man at once recognizes and worships. True, this is an an- 
thropomorphic infinite, an infinite constructed by the consciousness; 
this is the trend of intuitionalism, but it can not be avoided. 
Socrates drifted into anthropomorphism ; all rational, psychological, 
intuitional philosophy is carried over into a recognition of such an 
infinite. The only question is, is the infinite predicated by the 
reason, the true infinite ? To this we reply that as there can not be 
two infinites, any infinite predicated on a ground that can account 
for itself must be the true infinite. A false infinite is never pred- 
icated by any thing. A true infinite only is foreshadowed, dimly 
it may be, but not uncertainly. Hence, an anthropomorphic infinite 
is as reliable as a spirit or a priori infinite, or any other manifested or 
unmanifested infinite. Prof. Bowne seriously questions the force of 
intuitionalism, so-called, in the realm of ontology. Styling innate 
ideas the " raw rudiments of consciousness," he makes vigorous war 
upon them in order to relieve intuitionalism from some of its absurd- 
ities ; but it is evident that in avoiding one extreme he has swung 
over to its opposite. In answering Mill's allusion to the innate ideas 
of children, he scorns the thought of making a babe a pope in 



122 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

philosophy; but he at length accords to the " latencies" of conscious- 
ness which develop in the reflective mind the value of convictions 
respecting the infinite. The spontaneous consciousness is insignificant 
in its determination of the absolute; the reflective consciousness is 
voiceful of the infinite. In outcome, what is the difference between 
raw intuitionalism and the developed reason ? And if the developed 
reason intimates the infinite, the spontaneous reason must contain the 
intimation, just as the acorn contains the tree. The pope in phi- 
losophy is either a babe or a man ; in either case it is consciousness. 
Bowne is, therefore, an intuitionalist, vindicating the infinite from 
himself, an irresistible argument, put either in the old way, or 
the new. 

Mansel, examining the conditions of human consciousness, finds in 
it no absolutely clear adumbration of the infinite ; on the contrary, he 
sees in its conditions the contradictions of attributes which are allowed 
to belong to the infinite. This is a gun which in its recoil destroys the 
man that fires it. In an act of consciousness, one object is distinguished 
from another which implies limitation ; but limitation can not belong 
to the absolute. Again, consciousness implies relation between sub- 
ject and object ; but the absolute is unrelated. Again, consciousness 
implies succession and duration in time, or the finite ; but the infinite 
is not finite. Lastly, consciousness implies personality ; but person- 
ality implies limitation and relation ; hence, it can not represent the 
infinite. 

The weakness of this representation is two- fold : 1. Its implications 
of consciousness; 2. Its assumptions of the infinite. Initial or "raw" 
consciousness has but a single term, the infinite. From the single 
term emerges another term, the finite, and from both another, or re- 
lation. Relations, succession, limitations, are the products of the 
single term. The only idea in the consciousness is God. All others 
are subordinate or correlated. Mansel, selecting the subordinate ideas 
of the consciousness, proceeds to demolish the structure of rational 
theology, thus affording aid and comfort to materialism. 

His assumptions respecting the infinite are even more glaring 
than his weak analysis of consciousness. To deny personality to the 
infinite is to leave us Hartmann's unconscious deity, or no deity at all. 
To assert that the absolute is unrelated, is to assert what a finite 
mind can not know. To assert that the infinite is without any 
limitation whatever is equally a matter beyond human knowledge. 
Evidently, Mansel's infinite is not anthropomorphic ; it is not a 
rational, conscious, personal being. But this is drifting. God's found- 
ations are in man as man's foundation is in the dust ; a psychological in- 
finite is the demand of the reason, as a physiological finite is the demand 



A SUPRA-RATIONAL INFINITE. 123 

of the senses. To deny to reason the power to apprehend the infinite from 
its own processes of thought, to deny to consciousness the power to 
index the absolute is to leave God without a witness of himself in his 
greatest work, and will require a theology on a basis entirely foreign 
to human instincts and human life. Such a theology the human 
race has not as yet demanded. 

Mansel asserts that "we have no immediate intuitions of the di- 
vine attributes, even as phenomena ; " but this is straining the case 
beyond warrant. No intuitionalist claims that through the conscious- 
ness alone a knowledge of the divine attributes, taken singly, is 
possible ; all that he claims is a satisfactory assurance of the existence 
of an absolute being, whose attributes are vaguely inferred by subse- 
quent acts of the reflective reason. In the subsequent work of attri- 
bute-building there may be mistakes, but in the original conception 
of the Absolute there is no mistake. Discovery of the infinite pre- 
cedes description. Theology, revelation, psychology, may be nec- 
essary to the latter; apriorism and consciousness are necessary to 
the former. 

Sir William Hamilton, prior to Mansel, going over the same 
ground, characterized the anthropomorphic infinite as a mere abstrac- 
tion, and rejected its identity with the true infinite. Breaking loose 
from rational testimony, he constructs an infinite, unconditioned, un- 
related, unknowable, unthinkable. His conclusion is logical. To 
posit a rational infinite, or an unthinkable infinite, or no infinite at 
all, is the only alternative. An irrational infinite is inconceivable ; a 
supra-rational infinite is possible, but it is unthinkable, because above 
reason. Hamilton, unrestrained in imagination, exalts the unthink- 
able infinite, and Mansel echoes the baneful philosophy. 

In these flights to supra-rationalism the ordinary methods of rea- 
soning have been abandoned, and necessarily so. The psychological 
method, so instrumental in the hands of Cousin, is opposed to supra- 
rationalism ; the empirical method, in the hands of the associational- 
ists, only leads to an irrational infinite, or no infinite at all; the 
theological method conducts to a rational infinite ; but the supra- 
rational method leads to a supra-rational infinite, in which man can 
have no practical or permanent interest. 

The answer to supra-rationalism is the consciousness itself, the 
contents of which, having been analyzed, need not be repeated. 

The remaining item in our conception of the infinite is the testi- 
mony of the physical universe, which not only encourages belief in 
the divine existence, but also reflects somewhat of the divine charac- 
ter, two points necessary to a comprehensive understanding of the in- 
finite. The fact of God is of primary importance. Does the natural 



124 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

world re-declare him with the emphasis that attends the declaration 
of the human consciousness? Clearly, the answer turns upon the 
meaning philosophy gives to the natural world. If, as Mill suggested, 
the outer world is only a projection of subjective elements, an argu- 
ment from it is of the nature of that drawn from the consciousness, 
and is a reinforcement. If, as Berkeley insisted, matter does not 
exist, no argument is possible from that quarter. If, as Fitche held, 
the non-ego is a limitation of the ego, or a part of the ego, then in- 
deed a divine argument emerges, but at the expense of the idea of 
absolute and independent personality. If, as Descartes taught, the 
subject and object, or mind and matter, are entirely distinct, with no 
impulse to interaction, then it is possible to frame an argument from 
each which shall join in the general conclusion. If the implicit 
teaching of materialists that the universe is eternal be correct, then 
the question of an infinite God is open for discussion. If the im- 
plicit faith of humanity that the objective is the result of creation be 
well-founded, then an argument for a Creator is irresistible. 

From these and other standpoints nature may be viewed in its re- 
lation to the problem of the infinite, adding its testimony to the com- 
mon faith, or bewildering, and possibly overthrowing it. All idealistic 
views aside, the conflict in the testimony springs from the empirical 
conception of the universe as infinite or eternal, in contrast with the 
rational conception that it is finite, and, therefore, a product of the 
infinite. Between these reason must decide. Revelation apart, the 
reason must spell the infinite in the characters of the finite ; or, de- 
nying the finite, accept the pantheistic conception of the unity of 
God and the universe — a conception which, failing to distinguish one 
from the other, virtually destroys both. The ' ' eternity of matter " 
is in conflict with the eternity of God. In an apologetic spirit, Leib- 
nitz leaned toward the materialistic assumption of an eternal universe, 
yet so as not to compromise the idea of the absolute infinity of God. 
This he did by distinguishing between a relative infinity, as applied 
to the universe, and an absolute infinity, as applied to God ; but the 
thought of two kinds of infinity is not rational. If a relative infinity 
is less than infinite, it is not infinity at all ; if equal to it, it is divine. 
One or other it is. Some there are who say space is infinite and time 
eternal, meaning a relative infinity as applied to one, and a relative 
eternity as applied to the other ; but the language is used in an ac- 
commodated sense to express incomputable vastness, and practically 
limitless duration. The philosopher, however, rarely speaks in an 
accommodated sense. His business is with absolute truth, which will 
not admit an easy, or elastic phraseology. A relative infinity is 
suggestive of a relative infinite, from which the mind recoils. The 



PRIMARY QUESTIONS. 125 

suspicion that the universe is in any sense infinite or eternal is a 
compromise of the basal idea of the infinity and eternity of God. 

Hamilton struggled with the alternative of an infinite non-com- 
mencement or an absolute commencement of the universe, deciding 
that it is impossible to conceive of either, and yet that he must 
believe in the latter. This is only one of a number of paralogisms for 
which that philosopher is so eminently noted. If both are incon- 
ceivable, then the universe is inconceivable ; but, as the universe is 
conceivable, an absolute commencement is conceivable, since an in- 
finite non-commencement is in itself absurd. But absolute commence- 
ment is the logical basis of the common faith in a Creator. Thus, 
from the alternative of Hamilton emerges a theistic conclusion as 
satisfactory as theology would require; and though he phrases the 
unconditioned and absolute as inconceivable, he yet demands faith in 
it, as he finally does in a finite universe. This is the testimony of the 
universe: it is finite, it reflects the infinite; it had a beginning, it 
reflects the eternal; it is conditioned, it reflects the unconditioned. 
Beyond such testimony we need not go. As to its revelations of the 
infinite God, in his character, government, and purposes, this is not 
the place for a free estimate ; in subsequent pages the divine character 
will be exhibited, as it is revealed. 

The primary question of philosophy relates to the possibility of a 
knowledge of the existence of God by the reason. Evidently, such 
knowledge may be attained in this way. Employing a priori con- 
victions, the sentiments of the consciousness, and the testimony of 
the universe, the reason is able to satisfy itself as to the existence of 
a divine being ; and this justifies the philosophic attempt at in- 
vestigation. Philosophy has a mission, since God is cognizable by the 
reason. The philosopher's occupation is not .ended ; it is but begun. 

Nor is the problem of the infinite the only problem of philosophy. 
Man is a stupendous mystery, and asks for self-explanation. God 
interpreted, the interpretation of man must follow ; hence, God and 
man are one in the solution. Still, secondary as man is, he is war- 
ranted in making an independent self-examination, in order the more 
completely to understand God in his relations to man. A knowledge 
of being ; a knowledge of soul ; a knowledge of relations ; enter into 
the final conception of man. The history of humanity is as impera- 
tive as the history of the idea of God, for the human idea is as 
patent in civilization and history as the divine. Ignoring not the 
higher, it is incumbent on the philosopher carefully to inquire into 
the lower, and beginning with God to terminate in man, or begin- 
ning with man to terminate in God, linking the two into unity. 

The necessity for a searching self-examination or a study of the 



126 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

contents of human history, grows chiefly out of recent philosophic 
interpretations of man, both as respects his physical origin and physical 
character. The old question, " What is man?" is as philosophical as 
it is Scriptural, to be answered philosophically as well as Scripturally. 
Evolutionists like Hackel and Spencer pronounce man's appearance to 
be the result of the animal development in the world; and psycholo- 
gists like Alexander Bain, abrogating the essential difference between 
matter and spirit, declare mental action to be the result of physical 
organization, and the mind, therefore, to be a refined form of matter. 
The common faith respecting man's creation and the immortality of 
the soul is in direct conflict with evolution as expressed or formulated 
and with psychology as perverted in the interest of materialism. The 
conflict is fundamental. It involves character, destiny; involving 
character, it involves God ; involving destiny, it involves the highest 
self-interest. Hence, philosophy in its secondary work becomes phys- 
iological and psychological, as in its first work it is eminently theolog- 
ical. Nor can it suspend its task until, sinking lower, and yet 
rationally, it undertakes to estimate the visible or phenomenal world, 
interpreting it in its essence and in its relations to being. A lower 
task, but parallel in one sense with the higher, for the solution of the 
non-ego will materially aid in the understanding of the ego, as the 
solution of the ego will certainly result in a comprehension of the 
non-ego. In a previous paragraph it is hinted that philosophy tends 
sometimes to pantheism, or Spinozism, or Eleaticism, or subjective 
idealism, either to an amalgamation of the finite and infinite, or a 
total denial of the finite, all of which is subversive of true knowl- 
edge. As in the case of man, the universe must have a separate 
and independent treatment, or confusion will follow in the human 
understanding respecting things that otherwise might be partially 
understood. 

Conceding separate treatment, which is conceding separate reality 
to nature, we confront certain philosophic theories respecting our 
knowledge of nature that destroys the value not only of separate 
treatment but also of any treatment at all of nature. For example : 
Hamilton precipitates his doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, con- 
fining inquiry to mere relations, or phenomena in their relations, and 
forbidding any scrutiny back of forms or qualities. This is a block- 
ade to intelligent inquiry, compelling it to cease at the very point 
where it is anxious to press for answer. Superior to Hamilton 
in defining the limitations of knowledge, Kant declares the phenome- 
nal alone knowable, shrouding the " thing-in-itself," or essence of 
matter, with the blackness of mystery, and inculpating the intellect 
with an inability to penetrate beyond the visible. This is in conflict 



THE PROVINCE OF PHILOSOPHY, 127 

with the Christian conception of nature and with a true theory of 
knowledge, both of which will be stated and enforced at the proper 
time. In its interpretation of the universe philosophy descends into 
geology for facts, and roams over psychology for principles. Thus is 
it a scientific seeker, or philosophy with a scientific spirit. 

Philosophy in its search for the unconditioned is strictly theologi- 
cal ; in its study of man it is semi-scientific ; in its estimate of the universe 
it is wholly scientific. It embraces all knowledge, outside of Revela- 
tion, and is itself a continual revelation of truth, combining the study 
of God, mind, and matter, as neither theology nor science, if corn- 
fined to their specific tasks, can do. 

What is the province of philosophy? Is it to dwell in caves, lit 
up by the feeble torchlights of the senses ? or is it to seek the trans- 
figured heights of truth, and, discovering the long-lost and long- 
sought knowledge, pilot the race through the avenues of darkness to 
the jeweled throne of God ? 

The province of philosophy, as apprehended by philosophers 
themselves, as sketched in these pages, is the discovery or declara- 
tion of the uncaused personality in the universe, as the cause of all 
actuality, of the phenomenal world. This is its first duty. Per- 
sonality, not law ; being, not manifestation ; substance, not qualities ; 
God, not atomic principles ; it must seek to understand and proclaim. 
Philosophy must not discrown God. 

The province of philosophy is to understand man chiefly as a 
mind-being. Psychology and physiology, if twins, are not Siamese 
twins ; they are not a unit ; they cling not together ; they perish not 
together. The distinction between mind and matter must be clearly 
drawn, and man must be ennobled, not degraded, by self-knowledge. 
Philosophy must not discrown man. 

The province of philosophy is to comprehend the universe. This 
it is essaying to do, but its failure is manifest. Philosophy must be 
emancipated from the fiction that the universe is a self-creating, self- 
preserving, self-executing mechanism. Nor in the emancipation will 
it swing to a pantheistic conception of the universe, an equally dan- 
gerous fiction, as it confuses personality with universality. Philoso- 
phy, linking the phenomenal to its chariot, as the conquering Roman 
generals did their prisoners, may ride around the world amid the 
plaudits of the multitudes ; but, clinging like Stephen to the divine 
throne, it may ascend amid a mob of stones into the presence of God. 

The initial fact of philosophy is — Nature. 

The intermediate term of philosophy is — Man. 

The ultimate word of philosophy is — God. 



128 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER IV. 

NATURE); OR AN EXEGESIS OP MATTER. 

SO absorbed with rational inquiry and moral speculation was 
Socrates that he formed no acquaintance with nature ; he never 
addressed her in any form, and she never impressed him, notwith- 
standing her beauty and power. From the trees, the rocks, the fields, 
he learned nothing, but drifted into an idealistic conception of things 
that extinguished all interest in them. How far the absence of cor- 
dial sympathy with the physical world is a disqualification for philo- 
sophic insight into its contents may not be pointed out, but if one 
would exhaustively contemplate phenomenal appearances and ac- 
tivities, one must be en rapport with the phenomenal spirit, or the 
essence of things. Sir Walter Scott loved the trees; Cromwell was 
at home in the fields ; Audubon drew the birds to his hand ; Hugh 
Miller traced in the rocks the hand-marks of an unseen power ; and 
David shouted, "The heavens declare the glory of God." Rousseau 
was a worshiper of the material universe, and Hackel proposes the 
religion of nature as a substitute for Christianity. The philosophic 
indifference of Socrates and the philosophic devotion of Hackel are 
extremes to be avoided, for nature, as the arcanum of truth, should 
be studied, probed, questioned, and yet not be regarded as supreme, 
since both philosophy and religion agree that its existence is a muta- 
tion, and its final fate a dissolution. Nature is possessed of charms 
that poets have embalmed in verse ; laws that scientists have framed 
in words ; relationships that naturalists have reduced to systems ; in- 
teractions, homologies and adaptations that have excited the admira- 
tion of observers ; moral hints and suggestions that theologians have 
eagerly turned to account ; evidences of superintending power that 
atheists have not overthrown ; and exhibitions of divine wisdom that 
should thrill alike the inquirer and believer. 

Wide is the field of nature ; hidden are some of its forces ; oc- 
cult is its ultimate purpose ; problematical is its destiny ; and difficult 
is the task of searching and finding the spirit that dwells in it. Such 
a task philosophy imposes, such a task the philosopher must assume. 
That difficulties lie before the investigator of nature is self-evident ; 
that a satisfactory conclusion touching all points involved in the in- 
vestigation should not be expected in our present state of knowledge 
concerning matter, all must agree. 



INTERPRET A TIONS OF NA TXJRE. 129 

To be comprehensive, one's study of nature should embrace three 
points of view: viz., the common representation, the philosophic in- 
terpretation, and the religious conception, each being distinct in itself 
but taken together affording a progressive and complete idea of the 
physical universe. 

By the common representation is meant the uneducated, universal 
view of the race which, gross in some particulars, and superstitious 
in others, has in it certain traditional elements of truth upon which 
the race has acted with singular uniformity from the beginning. The 
practical sagacity of mankind, never rising to the height of a critical 
or close observation, and never going behind what it sees, hears, and 
touches, has led to the discovery of specific facts and principles in 
the economy of nature which have been applied to agriculture, nav- 
igation, architecture, and the general sphere of man's civil and social 
life, to his advantage and development. In other words, nature has 
been made tributary to the race's history and happiness. The 
appropriation of nature's laws, facts, and forms in man's history has 
been superficial since man himself has been slow to. inquire, discover, 
adapt, and employ the resources of nature. However, out of the 
crude and artless utilization of nature in the civilization of the world 
have issued a knowledge of nature, and a purpose to find out more 
than is now known. 

To interpret nature according to a religious creed, or in the re- 
ligious spirit, is the specific enterprise of those charged with the 
defense and propagation of Christian doctrine ; but philosophy itself 
can not proceed by entirely ignoring the Biblical exegesis, or even 
the crude conceptions of the unlettered multitude. 

The philosophic interpretation will appear to better advatage as its 
relations to the common and the Christian conceptions are conceded ; 
but for the purposes of this chapter it may be considered apart from both. 

As a preparation for a philosophic understanding of nature, we 
oblige ourselves to consider it in its wholeness, and not in its parts, 
only as they shall serve to illustrate the fundamental principles at 
issue. The law of analysis binds us to a descent from the universal 
to the particular, or, holding us to the universal conception of na- 
ture, permits its application to the individualizations of that concep- 
tion in the concrete forms of matter. As painting may be studied in 
its abstract principles, and no particular product of an artist be under 
inspection; as music and oratory may be historically contemplated 
without regard to particular compositions — so nature may be viewed 
in its entirety without a minute analysis of any particular form of it. 
The topaz is not the open door into the mineral kingdom ; the gera- 
nium is not the sponsor for the vegetable world; the mastodon, the 

9 



130 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

lynx, the eagle, or the horse represents not the animal kingdom ; 
that is, the part is not the key to the whole, hut the whole is the key 
to all the parts. From the height of the whole the interactions, the 
relations, and the individuality of the parts may be detected, ex- 
pressed, and understood. 

From this view it is easy to see that what will explain one world 
will explain the universe, and what will interpret the earth will in- 
terpret all that is upon it. What will account for the ocean will 
account for every drop in it. If we can not account for the whole, 
we can not account for the parts, The whole includes the parts. 

Out of the reduction of many views to one, and from this gaze in 
the beginning at the universal instead of the particular, arises the sus- 
picion that nature is one, and is to be philosophically interpreted from 
the standpoint of unity. The conclusion of a unity in nature is not 
new to the religious mind, for it is a Biblical doctrine, but philosophy 
has slowly advanced toward it, and is now compelled to embrace it. 
Plato was on the right track when he said, "The end of all philoso- 
phy is the intuition of unity," but his was a unity of cause rather 
than a unity of effect — a unity of the infinite intelligence rather than 
a unity of the manifested universe. Both conceptions — the unity of 
God and the unity of nature — are legitimate philosophic deductions, 
with only the latter of which we are at present concerned. 

Worshipers of the idea of the unity of nature are not confined 
to theologians ; the most eminent scientists and philosophers bow 
down before it, as they are affected by the religious spirit, or as pure 
science compels its acknowledgment, or as they discover that it ap- 
parently contributes to the support of their particular hypothesis. 
Whatever the motive, the unity of nature is now accepted by all 
classes of thinkers as a demonstrated fact. Hackel is very loud in its 
praise, but with evident purpose to rob nature of a teleological au- 
thorship, and to honor it as a self-made product. Humboldt was 
firmly persuaded that " one indissoluble chain of affinity binds together 
all nature." Sir W. E. Grove refers the causation of all "material 
affections," such as light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and motion to 
"one omnipresent influence;" while Hume admits that "one design 
prevails throughout the whole " universe, and that all things in it are 
" evidently of a piece." Linnaeus urged that the animal world spraiig 
from a single pair, and that the spirit of oneness is in nature. Her- 
mann Lotze intimates that the essence of " things" is unity; hence 
the essence of nature is the spirit of unity that pervades it. 

Without qualifying the opinions of the scientists and philosophers, 
or attempting to separate the true from the false, it is clear that the 
conviction that nature is, in an extraordinary sense, a unit, is univer- 



SIMPLICITY OF MATTER. 131 

sal. Materialists, evolutionists, associationalists, psychologists, physiol- 
ogists, naturalists, have at last surrendered to the Biblical conception 
of the unity of the universe. The scientific dogma of unity may be 
expressed in phrases different from the form of the Biblical dogma, 
but the two agree in one. The basis of the former is scientific dem- 
onstration ; the basis of the latter is revealed truth. In what the 
unity consists — whether of substance, form, origin, use, or destiny — 
is a primary question ; but it is gratifying that the scientific dogma 
and the Biblical representation are almost identical on all these 
points. Whatever difference exists is incidental. 

Eespecting the substance of matter, it has been demonstrated that 
the same gross constituents enter the composition of all planetary 
bodies, and that matter is, so far as determined, the same everywhere. 
By means of the spectroscope it has been ascertained that the sun and 
the earth are composed of the same materials, from which it is in- 
ferred that the planetary bodies constitute a brotherhood, bearing the 
same image, made in the same way, and appointed to the same des- 
tiny. The unity of substance is therefore the first declaration of the 
scientific dogma establishing the unity of the authorship of the phys- 
ical universe. 

Quite as expository of the scientific dogma is the admitted fact of 
the simplicity of matter, by which is meant that nature is a com- 
pound reducible in the last analysis to a few essential elements. The 
chemist is bold enough to announce that at the most there are not 
more than seventy elements that compose the earth, but of these only 
thirteen are prominent, or used freely in the forms and combinations 
of nature. Of the thirteen elements, only three or four, namely, 
oxygen, carbon, silicon, and nitrogen, are universally active, and of 
these oxygen constitutes about one-half. Professor Huxley reduces 
every material substance to water, ammonia, and carbonic acid, but 
this is a complex reduction, susceptible to a more minute subdivision. 
Oxygen is the great world-builder — a single element. Back of 
oxygen, however, it may finally be possible to go, for as a simple 
element, it may be ascertained to be compound ; and so of all other 
so-called simple elements. Under a more incisive and penetrating analy- 
sis, the simple may appear compound and the compound simple, until, 
going back to the final limit, all matter may be reduced to one ele- 
ment, of which the others are but diversified manifestations. In the 
immature stages of Physics voltaic electricity, thermo-electricity, and 
animal electricity were designated as different hinds of electricity, but 
electricity is a unit divisible into these different forms. So the sev- 
enty elements may be the metamorphosis of one element. Indeed, Dr. 
Prout, attributing a certain numerical value to chemical substances, 



132 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

which he called the atomic weight of the substance, found in nearly- 
all cases that it was an exact multiple of the atomic weight of hydro- 
gen, and was disposed, therefore, to regard hydrogen as unity, or the 
starting-point of the material universe. To be sure, oxygen or carbon, 
or any other element, might be taken as the unit of weight, but in 
such a case it would be arbitrary, whereas hydrogen appears like 
nature's own unit, and chemists generally now recognize it as the 
standard of atomic measurement. This system of weights or values 
has been assailed, but it is remarkable that it has not been overthrown. 

With slight variations in the system to meet certain exceptions, it 
may be used to prove that all substances are but multiples or mani- 
festations of primary substances, or a single original element, leading 
back to a unit never before dreamed of in philosophy. Thales traced 
all things to water ; but modern chemistry traces the atomic unit to 
hydrogen. If the worlds are but multiples of the atomic unit, how 
simple the whole universe, and what a demonstration of its unity ! 
The diversity of nature-forms in no sense stands in the way of, or 
qualifies the objective oneness of, world-life, for, given the single ele- 
ment, it is possible to explain all nature from it. An endless num- 
ber of forms do not perplex any more than a limited number. Three 
thousand stars do not introduce any more new problems than a single 
orb ; the explanation of one is the explanation of all. We are not, 
then, at the mercy of diversity ; it has its explanation. 

Vast is the animal kingdom, including more than twenty thousand 
species, and yet the whole is comprehended in the usual zoological 
system, which divides them into Vertebrata, Articulata, Mollusca, 
and Radiata, four great divisions, suggestive of the four elements 
which prominently appear in the inorganic world ; and, as the four 
elements have been reduced to an atomic unit, so the four zoological 
branches may be reduced to a single beginning. This is, indeed, the 
theory of ' ' descent," a contribution to the doctrine of the world's 
unity, but warped in the support of a materialistic hypothesis of the 
world's origin and development. 

Scientists have been troubled not a little over the subject of species, 
Linnaeus insisting that the animal kingdom originated from a single pair, 
while nearly all the later scientists have consented to a limited number 
of fixed types or original species in the beginning. Even granting 
that the theory of Linnaeus is unacceptable, the doctrine of fixed 
types is sufficiently efficient in its support of the doctrine of unity. 

Moreover, from the homological principle which seems to pervade 
the animal kingdom, a singularly striking proof of the scientific 
dogma of unity may be obtained. Zoologists agree that there is a 
correspondence, not, perhaps, complete, but sufficiently close to be 



FALSE IDEAS OF NATURE. 133 

observable, among the vertebrates in the general construction of their 
organs and the arrangement of their parts, pointing to a general plan 
in their history and development. For instance, the hands and feet 
of a man, the paws of a lion, the feet of a horse, and the fins of a 
whale, are homologous, demonstrating a common idea, and really es- 
tablishing an animalic relationship. The parallelism is by no means 
incidental ; its prominence in nature materialists employ as the proof 
of the unity of the world, or that one general idea pervades the one 
kingdom. Accepting the scientific discovery of the homological 
principle, it furnishes irresistible proof of the philosophic and theistic 
notion of a world-wide unity, centering in a common divine authorship. 

In like manner the vegetable world may be divided and subdi- 
vided, and, under the homological principle, reduced to a single plan, 
and possibly to a single element. The inorganic world likewise sub- 
mits to a similar reduction, pointing unmistakably to one plan and to 
one source. Evidently, science is pushing back toward the fewest ele- 
ments in the process of world-building, and is priding itself on the discov- 
ery of the law of atomic unity in nature, grounding all its forms into 
multiples of a unit, invested with the capabilities of a manifold life. 

Philosophy may readily embrace the doctrine of unity when so 
thoroughly supported by facts ; yet, if Hackel's view of nature be 
sustained, namely, that it is a physico-chemical process, without a 
personal author, and that it is a history of false suggestions, then de- 
ductions are unreliable ; but, on the whole, science gravitates to the 
view of the unity of nature in the sense explained. Hackel applies 
the word " cenogeny" to nature, meaning by it a " history of falsifi- 
cations," as if nature were untrue to itself or its own laws ; but this 
is in the interest of the grossest materialism. The scientific presenta- 
tion of the hypothesis of unity is not always what a philosopher may 
approve, and the philosophic elaboration of a scientific fact may be 
repugnant to a true or theistic conception of unity ; nevertheless, the 
idea of unity is congenial to science, philosophy, and religion. 

Planck undertakes to solve the unity of nature by a principle of 
" inner concentration," which is impulsive enough to reach out in all 
directions, producing in its activity the great and the small, and man 
as well as the insect. Just what the principle is, beyond its ideal 
character, it is a little difficult to gather, but, rationalizing it into a 
practical force, he attributes to it more than it actually possesses. 
St. George Mivart hints of an innate force, or internal powers, but 
his is a scientific utterance, while Planck's is a metaphysical illusion 
that really accounts for nothing. Its break-down is in its application 
to man, who, instead of being the product of an inner impulse of 
nature, is verily the image of a power outside of nature. The attempt 



134 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

of Planck, however inconclusive and unsatisfactory, is yet in harmony 
with the general idea; it presupposes that idea, and undertakes its 
solution. 

That mystical religious teacher, Swedenborg, was charmed with 
the scientific idea of unity, but went entirely beyond the limits of 
science for an explanation, and so his theory has suffered the usual 
fate of such adventures. Reduced to an aphoristic form, "nature is 
always self-similar." This is another phrase for the homology of na- 
ture extended to plants as well as animals. In the botanical realm the 
plant proceeds from leaf to leaf, ascending to something higher, but 
always carrying the mark of the lower ; it is a process of repetition 
as the condition of enlargement. The great is the repetition of the 
small. In the animal kingdom the same law has constant illustra- 
tion, as in vertebrates, beginning with the spine, hands, feet, and 
spines multiply, and at last man emerges. Man is a spine ! Nature 
is an ascending scale of unities and homologies, or a series of repeti- 
tions and enlargements, working along a line of anticipations of some- 
thing higher, a foreshadowing of evolution, mystically, rather than 
scientifically, presented. 

Concentrating his thought upon the doctrine of unity, Swedenborg 
surmised that each unity, so to speak, is a compound of unities, the 
simple is the sign of the complex, as the unity of the heart is made 
up of the unities of small hearts, and the unity of the eye consists 
of the unities of small eyes. A rational scientific order proceeds 
from the complex to the simple, but Swedenborg's mystical order 
ascends from the simple to the complex, rising from the finite to the 
infinite ; but it is confusing, because it is not transparent. Besides, 
its scientific accuracy may well be doubted. The eye is not a com- 
bination of eyes ; the hand is not a combination of hands ; a leaf is 
not a combination of leaves. At least the scientific proof is wanting. 
Notwithstanding the mystical idea of Swedenborg is mythical, and 
the theory of unity within unities is untenable, he held to the primary 
thought of wholeness in nature that pointed to a single governmental 
administration, having all power and all wisdom, and therefore suf- 
ficient for all things. 

Goethe speculated with rare philosophical ingenuity on nature, 
discerning in it a unity based on the correlation of its parts, and sug- 
gesting the latter-day doctrine of the correlation of forces. Emerson's 
statement that "he has said the best things about nature that ever 
were said," we can not accept fully, for he has denied some of the 
most patent scientific principles or facts, as the prismatic colors. 
Concerning unity, the leaf, in his judgment, is the key to the botanical 
kingdom, and the spine to the vertebrates; that is, the leaf is the 



SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. • 135 

unit in the one kingdom, and the spine the unit in the other. He 
affirms that the plant is a transformed leaf, and that the leaf may be 
converted into any organ of the plant, and any organ of a plant may 
be converted into a leaf. As clearly does he declare that the head is 
the spine transformed, and it would follow that the head might be 
converted into spines, or a spine into any organ of the head. This 
theory of " transformation" implies an involved relationship that bor- 
ders closely on the chemical idea of correlation, as motion is a form 
of heat, and heat a form of motion. It is a question if Goethe's idea, 
rescued from a scientific form, will not appear more speculative than 
practical or real, and if he did not borrow a little hallucination from 
Swedenborg. Even if the doctrine of correlation of forces has an in- 
disputable basis in fact, it may not be true as applied to the organs of 
plants, or the forms of matter, that is, the products of these forces. 
The homology of organs does not imply the convertibility of organs 
into one another. A leaf may be the figure of a tree in the mind's 
eye, but it is not clear that the tree is a transformed leaf. Goethe 
looked at nature, not in its wholeness, but in its parts, and proceeded 
in his theorizing from the particular to the universal, a mistaken order, 
resulting in a mistaken interpretation of nature. Like all other theo- 
ries, however, it confirms the doctrine of unity in nature, which is 
the chief point under consideration. 

Humboldt, prying into the deep secrets of the world as if they 
must throw off their disguises in his presence, imbibed as a founda- 
tion-idea of his cosmical beliefs the conception of a world-wide unity, 
which was the inspiration of all his discoveries and the root of all his 
labors. In him the conviction was profound that throughout nature 
one plan prevails by which order and development can be explained, 
and which had behind it the principle of an efficient and final 
causation. Swedenborg is mystical ; Goethe, speculative ; Hum- 
boldt is rigidly scientific, and therefore the most accurate and the 
most conclusive. 

The option of the student is that, while accepting unity as a 
scientific and philosophic doctrine, he may choose the materialistic 
solution of the doctrine as enunciated by Hackel, the mystical as 
avowed by Swedenborg, the correlative as proclaimed by Goethe, or 
the scientific as clearly presented by Humboldt. The trend of 
science, speculation, and philosophy is toward the doctrine of unity 
in nature. Except the most deformed and irrational pessimisms, all 
science, all philosophy, all religions, all materialisms, unite in pro- 
chiming the regnancy of an absolute monistic principle in the realm of 
nature. On any other hypothesis science is impossible, and along 
this line of accepted doctrine there is the possibility of reconciliation 



136 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

between systems hitherto roughly antagonistic and productive of dis- 
cord in circles that ought to agree. The first right view of nature, 
then, is that which so many divergent systems of thinking combine 
in maintaining, namely, the unity of the physical world. 

Agreeing to the doctrine of unity, the problem of the origin of 
nature, which now introduces itself, is somewhat simplified, for, if 
there are two or more kinds of matter, one origin might be insuffi- 
cient to account for them. As it is, in the solution of the origin of 
an atom of matter, or the discovery of a physiological or initial unit, 
lies the solution of the universe, and, conversely, the solution of the 
universe involves the solution of all that it contains. 

In its search after solutions the reason is confined to one of three 
theories, all of which have been ably expounded, but only one of 
which can be entertained as true. 

(a). The theory of the pre-existence of matter which the Stoics 
espoused and which does not require personal agency to account for 
it. Personal agency may be necessary to the organization of matter 
into forms, but by this theory divine intervention in the institution 
of matter is eliminated. Seneca taught that God organized matter, 
but did not create it. Anaxagoros said "all things had been pro- 
duced at the same time, and then intellect had come and arranged 
them all in order." Intellect is an organizer, but not a creator. ' 

(b). The theory that matter created itself. This is absurd, but 
recent scientists have held that the world organized itself without divine 
agency. Even Kant conceded that while God created matter and 
endowed it with laws, the universe developed without his personal 
supervision. Seneca and Kant occupy opposite grounds. Cicero 
conclusively disposes of the theory of a self-made universe by re- 
marking that it is as sensible to suppose the Iliad was written by , 
shaking letters in a bag as to suppose that the universe made itself. 

(c). The theory of the divine creation of matter. This solves 
every difficulty and in itself is the most rational conception of the 
origin of the universe. Given an intelligent Creator, and the end is 
reached, the dilemma is solved. Middle ground is impossible here. 
Between a self-made and a created universe there is no room even 
for thought. By its very constitution the mind demands not only a 
cause for every thing, but the cause must be sufficient to produce 
the effect. The Greeks fancied that every tree had its Dryad, which 
inspired it with life and died with the tree. The Dryad is repre- 
sented as a cause, but it is not a sufficient cause. The mind refuses to be 
satisfied with inadequate causes, even though they are causes and 
come to us in stately forms and are dressed in philosophic beauty. 
The cause must not only be a cause, but it must be adequate. Atom- 



UNSATISFACTORY THEORIES. 137 

ism is inadequate, for the atomist is unable to account for the atom. 
Atomism explains nothing; the most that it does is to remove the 
problem so far back that the mind loses sight of it, but vagueness is 
not solution. In the present stage of scientific research mystery im- 
pends over all problems, but it is incumbent on the scientist to avoid 
absurdities, contradictions, and false shows, and either suspend judg- 
ment until all the facts are obtained, or provisionally accept that 
theory which contains the fewest antinomies, and is freest from inter- 
nal difficulties. 

Reference to the mechanical theory of the world is unsatisfactory, 
for it deals with a developing world, or one in process of organic 
structure from pre-existing substances and by virtue of pre-existing 
forces and laws, and goes not back to primary or original sources. 
Reaching secondary causes it labels them primary, but the deception 
is apparent. Even should it contract the universe into a single atom, 
with a potentiality equal to the production of the universe, it is in- 
cumbent that it show where and how the first atom originated and 
whence it derived its sovereign vitality. What was the first throb of 
power that resulted in a potential atom, an atom that had a world or 
system of worlds rolled up in its invisible boundaries? Mechanical 
philosophy stares wildly as it searches for the beginning of the atomic 
movement. 

Musseus, an Athenian, taught that "all things originated in one 
thing and when dissolved returned to the same thing ; " but the one 
thing, as source of all things, he does not name or describe, and had 
he described it, its origin had still been a problem. Simplification of 
a problem is desirable, but it is not equivalent to a solution. Germs, 
physiological units, protoplasm, atoms, cells, eggs, — these do not contain 
the whole truth, the omitted portion being more important than what 
is declared. Atomism, monism, mechanism, words these that vindi- 
cate the doctrine of unity, but the origin of unity, the origin of 
atoms, cells, eggs, still remains unanswered. 

The nebular hypothesis if true may explain the .origin of planets 
but not the origin of matter ; that is, mechanical theories may be 
useful in determining the origin of the forms of matter without 
giving the least hint of the origin of matter. Between substance 
and form, or the spirit and body of matter, the difference is as great 
as that between memory and the brain. Once insure the existence 
of formless matter and its subsequent formal assertion follows. In 
this connection Kant perpetrates the following: "Give me matter, 
and I will explain the formation of a world ; but give me matter 
only, and I can not explain the formation of a caterpillar." Form- 
less matter is the prophecy of formal matter only because a Former 



138 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

exists and superintends the form. First the Former, second formless 
matter, third formal matter ; these steps are philosophical because 
necessary and rational. Spinoza accords to matter three potencies, 
gravity, light, and organization, but these are the potencies of law, 
for the organizing process is quite as much a legal procedure as the 
reign of gravity m nature. In no sense are these self-endowed potencies, 
but on the contrary, they are the expression of an intelligent 
supervision of the nature-world, by which it is perpetuated and con- 
trolled. Organization, or form, is the manner in which substance 
chooses to express itself ; it is the way in which substance behaves. 
Original or formless matter, the "world-stuff," may have been inde- 
pendent of government ; if so, its only law was inertia ; it existed with 
scarcely a property ; it was potential, not actual ; but in process of 
time the organizing spirit being imparted to it, it took permanent 
shape through the avenues of gravitation, chemical affinity, crystal- 
lization, and by means of the entire catalogue of nature's laws. By 
this change from the formless to the formal, matter advanced to a 
state of becoming something and is distinguished from being by 
being styled the becoming, or the non-being. It is not being, but it 
seems to strive after being, and comes as near to it as one substance 
can be like another. It has reality, but its visible reality consists 
in its forms ; its hidden reality is the spirit that dwells in it. Both 
the form and the spirit we shall now consider. 

The forms of matter are not the accidental results of the attrition 
of unguided forces, but the careful expression of geometrical ideas, 
evincing a plan in the history and development of nature. Nature 
is geometry crystallized. Not a single physical form can be pointed 
out that is not the embodiment of a geometrical principle or figure. 
The circle and the ellipse are embodied in the orbits of the spheres, 
and in the spheres themselves ; and angles of every name are illus- 
trated in crystals, ores, and the physiological construction of animals 
and plants. Music, painting, sculpture can be reduced to a mathe- 
matical process. Number is the ideal of the universe. Pythagoras dis- 
cerned the ideal plan, but did not elaborate it perfectly. Agreeing 
to a plan and then ascertaining what it is, if goes far toward confirm- 
ing the theistic conception of the origin of the world, for a plan that 
involves geometric law is implicit with divine intelligence and points 
directly to a supervising Creator. 

So closely related is the subject of form to that of substance, that 
the passage from one to the other is not difficult ; and as form can 
not be explained without substance, the latter must receive careful 
attention. The interpretations of nature, or those theoretical read- 
ings of the spirit of nature which obtain in philosophy, compel the 



IDEALISM A FANATICISM. 139 

conclusion that a solution of matter except by the theistic suggestion is 
improbable. To reach the theistic suggestion, however, certain logi- 
cal steps must be taken, beginning with the objective or formal 
realities of matter, and proceeding until the subjective side or inner 
light of nature is discerned. 

Every one sees the world differently; but this is not because the 
world is absolutely different to every individual, but because every 
individual is different. Epicurus taught that the world is actually 
what it appears to be ; an absurd idea, for to no two persons does it 
appear the same. Yet it is the same world, and it is the actual, 
not the appearing, world, that the mind seeks to understand. Be- 
neath its appearance is the substantial, manipulating spirit that gives 
its form ; this unseen power, this invisible substance, the mind desires 
to know. Schopenhauer considered the world as his representation, 
or the product of his idea, a not uninteresting conception, however far 
from absolute truth it is. It is not one's idea of the world, but rather 
the absolute world, that philosophy must deal with and reveal. Not 
appearances, not representations, not ideas, not forms, but substance, 
absolute spirit, internal reality, philosophy must find and declare. 

The idealistic interpretation of nature is not without friends in 
these modern days, as it was not wanting in advocates in the palmy 
days of Greece. Its danger lies in its tendency to fanaticism, for it 
is idealism that raises the question, does matter really exist? With 
this extreme we have no sympathy. Nature is a sublime reality, 
whose polarity or opposite is spirit. Non-being is as real as being; 
the phenomenal as patent as the substantial. Bishop Berkeley de- 
veloped idealism into a philosophic fanaticism, which received a 
philosophic thrashing at the hands of Hume. 

Purified of the fanatical tendency, and restrained by the realistic 
spirit, idealism, as a logical system, tends to the denial of the exist- 
ence of matter, and is therefore repugnant to the common sense of 
mankind. However, philosophy does not, and perhaps ought not to, 
ask the opinion of the majority concerning its teachings ; for its pur- 
pose is truth, which the majority may at first be inclined to reject. 
The apology for the fanatical content of idealism is in the plausible 
statement that the only reality is being, and that nature is becoming, 
but never is, and so is an illusion. To this transcendental interpre- 
tation, which reduces the visible to nothingness, Emerson commits 
himself, justifying it quite as much on Christian as on philosophic 
grounds ; for he insists that Christianity, by its denunciation of the 
world, by its declaration that it is perishable, and that it will finally 
perish, suggests an idealism identical with that of philosophy. But 
the idealism of Christianity does not deny the existence of matter ; 



140 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

it puts upon it the ban of perishability, and declares that, as com- 
pared with truth, spirit, knowledge, redemption, the world is valueless, 
is nothing. Christian idealism is productive of contempt for matter 
as such, because immortal things are in the foreground of the soul, 
and belong to it as its rightful inheritance. 

The old view of Heraclitus, that nature is involved in a process 
of flux or constant change, Plato accepted ; and, as a philosophic 
principle, it certainly is not wanting for demonstration. Seneca says 
no man bathes in the same river twice. Nature is a miracle of mu- 
tation — ever changing, yet ever remaining. The instability of nature 
is not an instability of geometric ideals, for these are fixed ; nor an 
instability of inherent laws, for these abide, but an instability of 
phenomena; the details, the products, the forms, perish, revive, and 
perish again. An inquiry into nature will be incomplete, therefore, 
that does not probe for stable elements, for fixed principles ; it is the 
fixed, and not the fluxing, that really constitutes nature. An ex- 
planation of nature is not in a revelation of a flux in nature, but of 
something which, producing the flux, remains itself unfluxed, un- 
changeable. 

Oersted, a Danish philosopher, was convinced that the world has 
a soul, but this is more fictitious than real, unless it be conceded that 
by soul is meant the law by which nature exists ; for our final analysis 
of nature conducts to the belief that it is impregnated by a legal 
spirit, which is the essence of its reality. There is something in na- 
ture which the eye can not see. It is the soul of law. To the eye 
of man nature is full of facts ; to the mind of man nature is full of 
laws ; nature is law in execution. 

Prof. Morris holds that the life of nature is the life of spirit, 
which may be accepted with the qualification that the spirit-life mani- 
fests itself through law, otherwise he must affirm that nature is spirit, 
abolishing the primal distinctions between matter. and spirit, or verg- 
ing on the idealistic denial of the existence of matter. In the very 
highest sense it is true to say that God is in nature, and that its life 
is the life of God ; but in a critical or philosophic sense it is equally 
true to affirm that nature is the product of the laws of God, and so 
reducing nature to law. 

Horace Bushnell defines nature to be that "created realm of 
being or substance which has an acting, a going on, or process from 
within itself, under and by its own laws." Nature is an " acting 
from within itself," or a process of law, as we prefer to phrase it. 

Herbart reduces the essence of a thing to a ' * simple quality ; " but, 
as he can not designate the quality, his theory is a bundle of 
words. 



DEFINITIONS OF MATTER. 141 

John Stuart Mill defines matter to be a "permanent possibility 
of sensations," but this is do definition at all. Matter a possibility ! 
Matter is a certainty, a reality, whose existence is in no sense depend- 
ent on human consciousness, or its relation to sensation. 

Herbert Spencer is equally airy in his definition, which is as fol- 
lows: "Our conception of matter reduced to its simplest shape is 
that of co-existent positions that offer resistance." Matter a position ! 
This only states where matter is, not what it is. 

The familiar definition of Alexander Bain, that matter is a 
"double-faced somewhat, having a spiritual and a physical side," is 
readily recalled in this connection. Without dissecting his applica- 
tion of the definition, but using it in our own way, we confess that it 
represents the truth respecting matter, whose physical side is its form, 
together with its properties, and whose spiritual side is the law, the 
life of its activity or existence. 

Hermann Lotze, sweeping away the mists, settles down to the 
conclusion that a Thing is law ; the essence of matter is not a simple 
quality, as Herbart holds, nor an aggregation of qualities, nor is it a 
"possibility" or "position," but it is the spirit of law, or the law of 
its activity or existence. Nature is the form of law ; law is in nature. 
He says: "Laws never exist outside, between, beside, or above the 
things that are to obey them." "Law or truth is," with which Plato 
agrees when he defines law to be the discovery of that which is. Law 
is the great reality, the ruling spirit, the life of the world. 

Prof. Bowne, seeing that activity is involved in the nature of 
things, and going behind the scenes of the phenomenal world, am- 
plifies the law of activity into the law of being, which means that 
law accounts for reality, or phenomena. In the law by which a 
thing exists is the secret of existence. A thing may therefore be de- 
fined, not by properties or its form, but by the law by which it is 
produced. 

Plato taught that ideas "participated" in the formal appearance 
of matter, which philosophy has either perverted or innocently mis- 
understood ; for, stripped of its mystical guise, the meaning is that 
law, which is a divine idea, not alone became incorporated with mat- 
ter, but instrumentally originated it. Without law matter is impos- 
sible. Law originated and participated in matter, and abides there. 
It is the only thing that does abide. Forms perish, but the geometric 
ideals, which are the signs of geometric law, abide forever. Forms, 
appearances, possibilities, properties, positions, all are lost sight of in 
the radical idea of law, as the essence of things, as the spirit of the 
life of nature, as the revealed secret of the universe. 

Going back to the source of things, the explanation of material 



142 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

phenomena, as respects their origin, development, history, and des- 
tiny, is not so difficult a task as has been imagined. 

Creation may be interpreted as the outgoing of law. By "crea- 
tion" is meant not alone the physical universe, which is properly the 
result of creative energy, but the act or process of creation itself. 
If at one time the universe was involved in an atom, it is rational 
to conceive of the atom as constituted in its prophetic fullness by law. 
Just what was the first act of Deity when he resolved upon creation 
is not known, but it is quite conceivable that motion or action itself 
was the first sensation of the divine being. As motion is convertible 
into heat, light, electricity, so the first motion of the Deity contained 
potentially the life of the universe. It is possible that the first divine 
act resulted in non-living matter, for the historic order of the phe- 
nomenal world, according to science, is from the non-living to the 
living, and this is also according to the Mosaic cosmogony. Matter 
first, life afterwards. The non-living first, that the Deity might be- 
hold his crude work ; the living next, that he might glorify himself 
in it. If motion were the first act of the Deity, it was also the first 
law, or the law of activity, by which all things finally appeared. 

This leads out into the broader arena of the universe as a created 
product, or the result of a Being whose first law is motion, and whose 
condition is activity. The universe was created according to law. 
This means method or order in the process of creation. What that 
order was, geology attempts in part to explain, while Moses gives it 
in full ; it was a scientific order, a progress from the non-living toward 
the living, a methodical development of physical history. It is clear, 
therefore, that the highest as well as the lowest types of existence, 
the crudest as well as the most finished forms of matter, are the re- 
sults of the law of motion, which, distributed throughout the limitless 
field of being, and applied by infinite wisdom, produced trees, crys- 
tals, birds, fishes, worlds, men. 

Every thing — matter, mind, soul — came into existence by virtue of 
a legal, that is, an orderly and methodical, process, since law is life, 
and life is the spirit of law. Our conclusions respecting nature are 
as follows : 

1st. Nature is the embodiment of the principle of unity ; it is a 
unit in its physical substance, whether the substance is hydrogen, pro- 
toplasm, bioplasm, or any undetermined substance. The differ- 
ences in matter are largely the differences of form, for all things may 
finally be reduced to the same thing. The correlation of substances 
is a standing proof of the unity of substance. Nature is one, not two. 
This demonstrates the singleness of its authorship, and points to one 
Supreme Being, the maker of all things. 



THE A TOMIC MO VEMENT. 143 

2d. Kespecting its origin, nature is proof of the necessity of a Cre- 
ator ; the theistic conception is fundamental to an explanation of the 
existence of nature. No materialistic theory can account for an atom ; 
God is a necessity. 

3d. The substance, the spirit, of matter, is the law by which it 
exists. Nature is law in form ; nature can not exist without law, but 
the law may exist without nature. Hence nature may perish and 
the law remain. The substance, the spirit, is immortal ; the form or 
nature is mortal. As law is immortal, so God, from whom it came, 
is immortal. 

The unity, the form, the substance of nature join in an affidavit 
to the necessity of the theistic conception as alone adequate to the 
existence of a phenomenal world. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE DANCE OF THE ATOMS. 

IN the year 1599 Sir John Davies published a poem entitled 
" Nosce Te ipsum," in which he describes the original movements 
of matter under the figure of a dance. All space is at the disposal 
of the dancers ; plants, animals, men, stars, and angels engage in the 
mazy scene, the movements being alternately gentle and violent, 
quiet and demonstrative, graceful and awkward, solemn and gay, as 
the parties are absorbed with the business-like amusement before them. 
Going back of these, the poet fancies that he sees the elements, fire, 
air, water, and earth, engaged in a revolving motion, now embracing, 
then separating, now combining, then each standing apart, and so 
proceeding until a world of order and beauty is the result. 

John Dry den likewise embalms in verse the idea of the world's 
creation by atomic movement, as follows : 

" From harmony, from heav'nly harmony, 
This universal frame began, 
When Nature underneath a heap 
Of jarring atoms lay, 
And could not heave her head, 
The tuneful voice was heard from high, 

Arise, ye more than dead ! 
Then cold and hot and moist and dry, 
In order to their stations leap, 
And Musick's pow'r obey. 



144 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

From harmony, from heav'nly harmony, 

This universal frame began ; 
From harmony to harmony, 

Through all the compass of the notes it ran, 

The diapason closing full in man." 

These are poetic representations of a great philosophic thought — 
the theory of the origin of the worlds in atomic substances or forces. 
It therefore deserves special consideration. A comprehensive study 
of original or atomic movement includes, 1. The existence of the 
atom ; 2. The character of the atom ; 3. Its capacity for motion ; 4. 
The genesis of its impulse to motion ; 5. Its selection of form ; 6. Its 
development and history. 

If it can be scientifically settled beyond doubt that the worlds 
were originally atoms, or that the original forms of 'matter from which 
worlds have issued were atoms, the mystery of the dance is consider- 
ably simplified. It is, however, at this point that the trouble begins. 
The hypothesis of the atom is a good ' ' working hypothesis " for the 
materialist, and, for that matter, for the theologian also, but the data 
for such hypothesis are not the most assuring. The assertion that the 
universe is the product of evolution from star-dust, or atomic centers, 
is easily made, and such words as " protoplasm," " germs," "units," 
"ultimates," and "atoms" may be used with a confidence that will 
inspire respect ; but the assertion of atomic origin is not equivalent to 
the demonstration. " The genesis of an atom," says Spencer, " is no 
easier to conceive than the genesis of a planet." 

Perhaps it should not make against the theory that no one ever saw 
an atom, for the greatest forces are invisible ; nor should it be charged in 
derision that atoms do not now exist, for existing worlds have taken the 
place of atoms. It should not be forgotten, also, that if the existence 
of original atoms be established, our reverence for the Creator must 
be intensified, for if he built the worlds, so magnificent in structure 
and equipment, from beginnings so marvelously small and unpromis- 
ing, he is a most wonderful being, quite as marvelous in his doings 
as the most devout Christian ever supposed him to be. Religion can 
apostrophize the atom, since it magnifies the Creator, a result the 
materialistic atomist did not foresee, or he had been slow in adopt- 
ing it. 

It is not sufficient to inspire faith in the theory to know that it is 
both ancient and modern ; to be told that Democritus expounded it 
with great enthusiasm, and Epicurus indorsed it as if it were a con- 
viction of his own ; or to be reminded that Leibnitz reduced original 
matter to monads, every one of which was potentially a mirror of the 
universe. But when such a metaphysician as Lotze insists that the 



INQUIRIES CONCERNING ATOMS. 145 

real world of nature should be considered " under the form of an in- 
finite number of discrete centers of activity," we are compelled to 
treat the atomic theory with the highest respect. He discusses in his 
" Metaphysic" the " antithesis between atomism and the theory of a 
continuous extension in space," and because he can not accept the 
latter he proceeds to vindicate the former. "The sharp edge of a 
knife, when placed beneath a microscope, appears to be notched like 
a saw, and the surface, which feels quite smooth, becomes a region 
of mountains," is his illustrative argument against " continuous ex- 
tension ;" but it is not clear that atomism is the polar extremity of 
such extension. Mountain peaks, apparently standing apart, may be 
joined at the base ; ' ' discrete " forms may be lost in underlying 
unity. Atomic separations may be consistent with a basal continuous 
extension. This involves relation, correlation, interaction, and the 
system of inter-dependence in the universe, into which it is not neces- 
sary to go. 

For us, it is not so important to know who subscribes to the atomic 
theory as it is to know on what basis the theory rests. We are not 
disposed to assail it on the ground of prejudice, for we have no preju- 
dice to serve; we can believe in the atomic idea with as much en- 
thusiasm as any student of truth, and without any fear of danger 
to the Biblical exegesis, so soon as the proof, or even the probability, 
of the existence of atoms is furnished. At present, however, the 
atomic idea is a conjecture, the proof indefinite and imaginary, and 
faith in it must be at our option. It does not suit our purpose to 
deny the theory ; on the contrary, anxious that it may be fully under- 
stood and thoroughly investigated, we proceed to inspect its contents 
and listen to its explanation of the evolution of the worlds. 

A mystery confronts the inquirer before he takes the first step. 
It is not proclaimed with sufficient clearness by the advocates of the 
theory just what the original atoms were, that is, whether they were 
solids, liquids, or vapors, or whether they had fixed forms or were 
formless, or where they came from, or whether they were eternal or 
made themselves. Some of these questions have been overlooked in 
the eagerness to trace worlds to revolving points, inscrutable in their 
origin, and potential in their contents, adaptations, and prophecies. 
The settlement of some of them, however, is necessary to the existence 
of the theory. Belief in atoms presupposes a knowledge of their 
origin, content, purpose, power, relation, form, or acting principle. 
Touching some of these things, the atomist can not be wholly in the 
dark ; hence, the duty of revealing what he knows. Democritus was 
somewhat specific in his description of atoms, conjecturing that they 
were infinite in number, assumed mathematical figures, were divisible, 

10 



146 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY, 

and propelled by an inherent law of motion. Epicurus, an enthusi- 
astic supporter of the theory, gave particular attention to the forms 
of atoms, describing them as square, spherical, and triangular, and 
that these forms were unchangeable. He also maintained that, by 
combination, secondary forms were produced, but that the original or 
primordial atoms were indestructible and entered into all things. 

Without controversy, it is conceded that an original atom must 
have been physical or natural in character or essence ; that is, it was 
in no sense supernatural, for, had it been supernatural, the product 
or development had been a supernatural world. Inasmuch as the 
universe is the resultant of the atomic movement, the atom could not 
have differed in character from the universe. The fig-tree does not 
produce thistles ; the atom produced a world after its kind. This is 
logically, genetically consistent, and science takes no exception. 
Natural atoms may be divided into two kinds: atoms of ether, and 
atoms of solid matter. Over the latter the law of gravitation exer- 
cises its influence ; the former are independent of it. But this division 
introduces a vexing problem, for the law of motion affecting a solid 
can not affect a vapor ; hence, two laws of motion are required. 

Again, if the atom was the prophecy of the "becoming," then it 
was potentially the becoming. As the acorn contains potentially the 
oak, so the atom contains potentially the universe. Evolution is in 
proportion to involution. The miner gets out of the mountain only 
what is in it. To allow that one small planet like ours was once an 
atom is to concede a great deal ; but the theory requires that all the 
solar systems, the nebulae unresolved, the whole firmament, the astro- 
nomic heavens, were at one time nomadic atoms, wanderers in the 
spatial sea. The magnitude of the universe is not quoted as an em- 
barrassment to the theory, for the theory is tenable if based on the 
theistic conception, the very thing, however, which the materialist is 
anxious to overthrow. The fact that the world, was built at all, that 
it exists, is as great a wonder as any process by which it came into 
existence. Any process of world-building will excite reverence in the 
thoughtful mind. 

A striking peculiarity of the atom is its tendency to motion or 
capacity for development. Without such capacity, the universe had 
not appeared. All forms, both of organic and inorganic matter, 
are the results of the internal disposition of the atom to develop- 
ment. In speaking of the capacities of the atom, we should speak 
cautiously, since very little has been demonstrated; but, speaking 
speculatively, we may be bold in statement and even heroic in 
theoretical suggestion. Granting that the atomic theory is possibly 
tenable, one is compelled to allow that the atom shall have certain 



ENDOWMENTS OF THE ATOM. 147 

attributes and functions, without which its task can not be performed. 
Granting it one function, another must be conceded, and still another, 
until it is sufficiently endowed to project worlds from its center. 

Its chief characteristic is the power of motion. Scientists agree 
that motion is a principle in the universe, and not a few suspect that 
it is the essence of things, or, as it has been demonstrated that heat 
may be converted into motion and motion into heat, the conclusion 
that all things are but the expression or types of motion has been 
advocated with a logical plausibility. If motion is a universal prin- 
ciple, primarily it must have belonged to the atom ; but how the atom 
came in possession of the impulse is yet an undecided question. Was 
the atom a center of motion, with independent power of self-motion? 
or was it an inert thing, incapable of motion until acted upon by 
some external force ? This is the dilemma of philosophy. To admit 
to the atom the capacity for motion explains nothing. With this 
embarrassment in view, many scientific thinkers intimate that the 
atom had an inherent power of movement. Lotze, no less than 
Hartmann, representing the opposite poles of philosophic thought, 
substantially agree in conferring upon the atom the function of ele- 
mentary force ; but Lotze accepts the theistic conception, and so is 
consistent. He does not regard atoms as the final elements of matter, 
but looks upon them as complex data, behind which science can not 
go, but from which a divine creative act may be inferred. 

The materialistic atomist has no solution for his difficulty except 
scientific superstition. 

Epicurus, atheistic in theology, advocated the theory of spontaneous 
motion in atoms, explaining their nature and activities by a purely 
materialistic hypothesis. In his judgment, the atom is an eternal 
substance aud has always been in motion. In itself it is nervous, 
restless, eager, aspiring, and will not lie still. He attributes weight 
to it, which presupposes external influence, or the doctrine of the 
mutual relation of atoms. Its incipient movement is in a straight 
line, but suddenly and of its own accord it may deviate in any direc- 
tion, going diagonally, turning around, rising up, or falling down. 
Independent of all control, it may act soberly or wildly, it may be- 
have itself or appear as if intoxicated, it may walk alone or waltz 
through space with kindred atoms; it gives no account of itself, ex- 
cept as it pleases. This is a pretty fair biography of the atom, but 
it is necessarily incomplete. 

Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, the ancient fathers of the 
atomic theory, not always clear in conception or conclusive in state- 
ment, do not differ respecting the endowments of the atom which 
qualify it for independent activity and the power to produce cos- 



148 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

mical systems. Leucippus, attributing an infinite standing to atoms, 
conceived that, under the natural principle of like attracting like, 
similar atoms approached one another, combined their interests, and 
grew into the mammoth proportions of the stars. By " ceaseless reper- 
cussion," the atoms in the progress of their development assumed all 
the "possibilities of forms," which took the names of mountains, 
oceans, trees, birds, animals, and men. Even man is traced to the 
atom! Clearly enough, the old philosophers were not afraid of the 
consequences of their theories. Atomism and atheism joined their 
interests, and materialism was triumphant. To such a conclusion an 
anti-theistic atomic theory necessarily leads, for the atom is dependent 
or independent, derived or primary. Its status once settled, and a 
conclusion is inevitable. 

The genesis of atomic motion is the conundrum of the atomists. 

The spontaneity of atomic motion the materialist must accept, or 
resort to the delusion of the eternity of matter. Spontaneous motion, 
however, is as mythological as spontaneous generation. Motion is 
implicit with antecedence. It goes back, ever pointing to a single 
source. Motion implies a mover — so taught Plato; and his account 
of creation in the Timceus, through atomic movements, is superior to 
the modern materialistic conception, because it involves the presence 
of an organizing and directing mind. Motion implies antecedent 
preparation, begetting, touching, imparting, or it is self-begotten. 
Without pressing this distinction far enough to verge on the necessity 
of a personal being as the author of all motion, we observe that mo- 
tion, as now understood and explained, is the result of law, and is in 
no instance spoken of as spontaneous. Motion is the product of a 
system of laws, the chief of which is gravitation, and without which 
motion would be impossible. The revolutions of the solar system are 
not attributed to any spontaneous force in matter, but rather to the 
influence of the law of attraction, and every other motion is explained 
by reference to the same general influence. Is gravitation the law 
of atomic movement? Sir Isaac Newton denies that the "force of 
gravity" resides in the atom, leaving it a forceless, motionless thing, 
and dependent upon an outside power for animation and movement. 
He was emphatic in the rejection of the idea that gravity is M innate, 
inherent, and essential to matter." Faraday likewise pronounced the 
dynamical theory absurd. McCosh repudiates the idea of self-acting 
matter. Either this conclusion must be accepted, or the dynamical 
theory of matter, the theory of inherent force, or self-moving matter. 
Few theists subscribe to the latter, for it is full of danger ; it 
points to pantheism. The old atomic theory of Democritus is too 
materialistic for Anglo-Saxon or modern theologians; but theistic 



ORIGIN OF ATOMIC MOTION. 149 

metaphysicians are found supporting both Sir Isaac Newton in his 
denial of inherent force, and the dynamical theory, or the theory of 
innate power. As yet, there is no standard by which to determine 
whether one's view is orthodox or not, for if he accept the theistic 
government of the world, he can accept any philosophic theory of 
matter. 

As there is no motion known to science that is not due to attrac- 
tion, it is consistent to affirm that the atom was governed in its initial 
movements by the law of gravitation, which had its source, not in the 
atom, but in the supervising and endowing will of God. This cer- 
tainly is the genesis of motion in the atom. In itself, the atom had 
no power of motion; that is, it did not originate motion. Unless 
moved, it remained motionless. Inertia was, therefore, the primal 
condition of the original atom. 

Nevertheless, the atoms dance — what music thrills them into 
motion ? What voice do they hear and obey ? What impulse over- 
comes the inertia of the atom? Heraclitus held that all nature is in 
a perpetual flux, forever but silently changing, its constituents pass- 
ing away to be replaced by similar constituents ; perpetual change is 
the order of phenomena. The law of change however, does not ex- 
plain the origin of the dance. Geoffroy Saint Hilaire refers all 
forms of matter to certain " elective affinities of the organic elements," 
but this is a rhetorical statement, not a philosophic explanation. 
Whence the organic elements? Whence the affinities? The affinities 
of matter are the attractive forces of matter, expressed by the 
generic word — gravitation. If atoms exist, and are endowed with 
" elective affinities," by which they are drawn together and combine 
in an aggregation of worlds, dispute ends; but to assume such en- 
dowment and then build up the theory on the assumption is a strange 
way of getting at the iruth. 

Spencer, compelled to account for these things, suggests the 
natural instability of the homogeneous as the fundamental cause, but 
it is a superficial explanation ; it explains nothing. Suppose the 
homogeneous were unstable, what caused the instability? Were the 
atoms of uniform size, function, and power, or were they of diverse 
sizes, and did they possess various and dissimilar functions, and were 
there jealousies and rivalries among the atoms, producing discord of 
feeling, instability of friendships, and actual hostility, resulting in 
wars and aggressions? The doctrine of instability implies general 
commotion, and commotion is proof of motion; but Spencer conducts 
us no nearer the beginning than Hilaire. 

Granting that motion is implicit with the law of gravitation, it 
must be understood that it includes a variety of laws, without which 



150 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

atomic movement can not be explained. Inertia is the primal state 
of the atom ; motion is communicated ; attraction begins here ; re- 
pulsion is felt there ; equilibrium or neutrality is maintained yonder ; 
and so in the general movement centripetal and centrifugal influences 
become clearly manifest. As these are more or less positive, adhe- 
sion, cohesion, chemical attraction, crystallization, condensation, com- 
bustion, reaction, interaction, and specific forms follow. To explain 
all these by the dynamical theory is quite impossible; to explain 
them as variations of the initial law of motion is not absurd, provided 
the law of motion is accounted for. If one is undertaking to explain 
atomic movement, one is bound to explain the first movement as 
well as the last ; in fact, if one will explain the first movement, one 
can be excused from explaining any thing else. The atomic theory is 
burdened with this unanswered and unanswerable disadvantage that, 
whatever the explanation of the movement, whether "elective affin- 
ity," " instability," " inherent force," or any thing else, it fails to ac- 
count for the "affinity," " instability," " inherent force," or any thing 
else that it uses as an explanation. Its explanation always re- 
quires another explanation which it can not give. The theory is 
proof of the limitations of human thought, and shows that matter, 
movement, and law must have an outside explanation, or a theistic 
source. 

The difficulty is not ended. Granting the power of motion to 
the atom, according to the theory, it is perplexing to understand the 
variety of forms matter has assumed, or to explain its transmuta- 
bleness. If the atom has the power of motion, has it the power of 
choice in its development, or is the development an accident ? Darwin 
does not explain the introduction of forms, but this explanation the 
theory must make, or it is valueless. The original atoms were of 
uniform size, functions, and aims, or they were not ; if they were 
alike in every particular, if they believed alike, so to speak, and 
danced in the same way and to the same music, it is difficult to ac- 
count for differentiation in result ; if they differed, who or what 
made them to differ? If like produce like, then uniform atoms 
should produce uniform results, but the "becoming" is a panorama 
of infinite variety. It is necessary therefore to allow difference, con- 
trariety, and a menagerie of functions to atoms. 

But how account for contrariety of purpose in atoms ? What es- 
tablished the difference of aims? Did they hold a convention, and 
agree on separate idiosyncrasies, or did they inherit from a common 
parent a multitude of diverse qualifications for their future history ? 
Uniformity of aim in atoms is inconsistent with variety of result ; 
contrariety of aim is indicative of wisdom, a supervising agency, 



FORMS OF ATOMS. 151 

which means more than the materialistic atomist can understand. No 
knowledge of the universe is at all possible that does not account for 
difference of aim in nature. Verily, as Herschel suggests, the atom, 
with its power, functions, aims, and forms, begins to look like a 
manufactured article. 

The form of the original atom is still undetermined. If a solid, 
its physical shape might be conjectured ; if a liquid or vapor, it was 
without form. Plato in the Timaeus represents the original elements 
as shapeless, and from the shapeless the shaped universe proceeded, 
but the result is explained by the participation of divine ideas with 
matter in its progress toward forms. Moses writes that the earth was 
without form, but was shaped by a Shaper ; so the atom may have 
been formless, but took form in the hands of a Former. From the 
theistic standpoint the forming process is one of ease and account- 
ability; from the standpoint of the atomist it is in vain that we seek 
for the power of form, unless it is insisted, like motion, to be inherent; 
but if the one is absurd, so is the other. 

Whence, then, the propensity to form in matter ? The relation of 
motion to form is conspicuous ; that is, without motion, form is impos- 
sible. With a predisposition to form, an atom must be stirred, moved, 
excited, and whirled before it will reveal its preference for a partic- 
ular form. Why the final preference? Why the circular form? Why 
the octahedral? Why the triangular? Why all the simple and com- 
pound forms of matter? Atoms might have danced themselves into 
a few simple forms, and these by combination have solidified into com- 
plex forms, but so soon as the dance was over, each atom, if it had 
any respect for itself, would seek to preserve its identity, and a re- 
turn to original simplicity had been unavoidable. 

It is time to consider whether the original atom was a simple, 
unorganized substance, or a concrete receptacle 01 co-ordinate powers 
and substantial elements. The validity of the atomic theory, as well 
as the present question of the origin of forms, is involved in this inquiry. 
Spencer intimates that germs are homogeneous, or simple substances, 
without signs of organization ; but Mr. Tyndall suspects that the 
most simple is complex, that the microscopically small is mysteriously 
large, and that it is impossible to "grapple with the ultimate struc- 
tural energies of nature." Spencer proposes simplicity, unity, -as an 
underlying fact; Tyndall proposes complexity. The two may fight 
it out, but observers of the spectacle have something to say while it 
is going on. If Mr. Tyndall is correct, the atom is a complex sub- 
stance, which Lotze really implies ; but whence the complexity ? If 
Spencer is correct the atom is a simple substance, but whence the 
simple content? The problem is not reduced by Spencer, it is not 



152 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

magnified by Tyndall ; it is as great, it is the same problem whether 
a germ is simple or complex, for the problem is, not how much is in 
the atom, but is there any thing in it? Tell how the atom came to 
be loaded at all, and the size of the load will then receive consider- 
ation ; and until the origin of content is settled the origin of form 
can not be settled. 

The permanency of natural forms also provokes inquiry, compell- 
ing the atomist to explain or retreat. With divergence of form there 
is stability and a basis of classification. Mathematics is grounded in 
the construction of the universe. Not only architectural ideas of 
order and proportion obtain in nature, but mathematical princi- 
ples are easily traced in the organic and inorganic realms. Geometry 
is the mathematical spirit of matter. Creation proceeded by its rules. 
The Duke of Argyll emphasizes the belief that creation was by law, 
as evinced in its order, in its fixed types, in its gradations, in its 
adaptations ; but he might have added that the specific law of crea- 
tion, however manifold the types, orders, adaptations, and adjust- 
ments, is mathematical. Plato lays the universe in triangles. 
Pythagoras projected his philosophy of number as the secret of the 
universe, the interpretation being that mathematical proportion, 
order, and forms constituted the principles and archetypes of the 
divine mind in the development of the astronomic worlds. Astron- 
omy is the crystallization of geometry. Mineralogy is geometry as a 
fine art. Chemistry is geometry on wheels. 

As geometrical principles are decisive and fixed, so are the forms 
of matter in which they have illustration. Hence no new mathemat- 
ical forms have been discovered ; the concrete owes its concreteness 
to the limitations of applied mathematics. Spheres, angles, squares, 
cubes, polyhedrons, and their cognate forms, constitute the essential 
manifestations of matter ; while straight lines and curved, with their 
variations, are the tape-lines by which to measure the forms. 

We insist upon the permanency of matter-forms, but in so doing 
the atom may be interrogated for a history of the facts. Left to 
itself, would it seek any particular form ? Would it especially settle 
down to one form ? In the mad dance in space, aroused by inequal- 
ities of endowments, would not the atoms assume a thousand different 
attitudes, and take as many forms as there were groups or individ- 
uals ? What would restrict the selection of form ? Would not each 
palpitating atom, through sheer jealousy, adopt a form for itself, as 
the old families of Europe had each its coat-of-arms ? Evidently the 
atom, however inclined to independence, felt its limitation, and 
stepped into the dance under command of a very embarrassing re- 
striction, compelled to adopt a form it neither invented nor possibly 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ATOM. 153 

preferred ; yet it obeyed. Itself formless, yet endowed with a pro- 
pensity to form, it found it must regard certain principles which lim- 
ited its products to a few visible manifestations. Doubtless, as the 
dance proceeded, the atomic world groaned under the restriction of 
geometrical ideals, but there was no way to avoid them. These 
ideals, these geometrical restrictions, the materialistic atomist can not 
explain ; they point to divine wisdom, and are proof of the necessity 
of a divine personality in creation. 

The future history of the atom, or its development from the 
atomic condition to a world-state, it belongs to us to read. Whatever 
makes against the theory itself we waive, for materialistic science is 
inclined to accept it. Let us concede to the atom an unquestioned 
reality, endowed with capacities unmeasured, if not infinite; let it 
contain potentially the universe ; let there dwell in it the power of 
self-motion ; let the propensity to form be ever one of its animating 
impulses or thoughts ; thus dowered, it starts upon its course. Two 
questions arise : What is its actual development ? What becomes 
of it? 

Look !— a universe greets us. From the atom to the universe is 
an immense, a magnificent, development, proving that the universe 
was potentially in the atom, if it prove any thing, and that under no 
circumstances could it have developed into any thing but the universe. 
This restriction, in its development, overthrows the suspicion of the 
element of chance, or even of self-guidance, in its history; it estab- 
lishes the presence of supervising mind. The universe is not an 
accident, but the orderly progress of atomic movement, and the result 
of the concurrent and forefixed agreement among the atoms, which 
safeguards the divine factor in creation. Now, if the potentiality of 
the universe reside in atoms, it resides in a given number of atoms, 
or in a single atom. If in a single atom, why other atoms at all ? 
If in a single atom, does every other atom contain potentially a uni- 
verse ? If so, why are there not other universes ? On the supposi- 
tion that a single atom is the germ of the universe, atoms disappear, 
and the atomic theory is the theory of an atom ; on the supposition 
that the universe is the development of an indefinite number of 
atoms in various combinations and relations, the incompetency of any 
single atom to produce the universe is foreshadowed. But so soon as 
the imperfection of a single atom is discovered, suspicion is raised 
against all atoms, whatever their number or relations. If every atom 
is deficient, or insufficient to produce the universe, it is difficult to 
understand how any number of atoms can produce it. Deficiency 
added to deficiency a thousand times does not give value to the other 
side of the equation. Zero multiplied a million times by zero is 



154 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

zero. Deficiencies multiplied by as many times as there are atoms 
will not equal potentiality. In this view the atomic individuals are 
potentially inadequate to the universe. 

To assert that the universe is the result of a combination of atoms 
is not to add a new meaning to the theory. A combination of atoms 
is not essentially a new production. New forms may appear by com- 
bination, but not new constituents of matter ; but it is new constitu- 
ents that are required to help the infirmities of the original atoms. 
In this view a new atomic theory is required. 

If it is alleged that imperfect atoms are competent to evolve an 
imperfect universe, and, in order to justify the atomic theory, it be 
added that the universe is imperfect, we take issue at once, for, in- 
stead of evolving an imperfect universe, the imperfect atom could not 
evolve any universe at all. An inadequate atom will not satisfy the 
demands of any atomic theory. 

Thus, from whatever view the atom is considered as an original, 
independent, self-existing, self-endowed source of power, it turns out 
to be a lamentable failure. To give it the required efficiency ; to en- 
dow it with the heritage of omnipotence ; to clothe it with selective 
affinities ; to stimulate it with an infinite energy, and to circumscribe 
it with restrictions that prevent it from becoming the sole Infinite, 
supplemental agencies, forces, or personalities are required. The atom 
needed for the theorist probably never existed, and it is certain that 
the atom described by the atomist is only the atom of his imagina- 
tion. In the development of the universe the atom, therefore, be- 
comes extinct. 

To conclude : The atomic theory of the universe is philosophically 
incompetent to account for it. It satisfies no inquiry respecting the 
genesis of things. Phenomena can not be explained by phenomena. 
An atom is a phenomenon requiring explanation. 

The atomic theory, eliminating the influence of a governing 
mind, is self-destructive, since it involves the absurdity of self-originat- 
ing functions and powers in matter without mind. Given a Creator 
of atoms, and the atomic theory is tenable. In that case the Creator 
may have to be explained, which involves other questions, but, what 
is all-important to the student of genesis, the atom is explained, and 
a cosmological basis satisfactorily settled. 

The dance of the atoms, as the materialist describes it, is the dance 
of darkness and death ; as the theist would gladly describe it, it is the 
movement of God over the face of the deeps. 



THEORIES OF LIFE. 155 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE GROUND OR LIKE). 

** r I \EE word Life still wanders through science without a defini- 

X nition," says Henry Drummond. The failure to define is not 
the result of scientific indifference to the subject, for it has been thor- 
oughly investigated by the thinkers of all the schools, but it is rather 
the result of a pronounced mystery that envelops it. Scarcely a solu- 
tion or provisional hypothesis presented is satisfactory from the inner 
sanctuary of things ; not a theory has been urged that has not been 
modified or overthrown ; and it is confessed that, from the philosoph- 
ical standpoint alone, the mystery is quite as profound as ever. 

The principal theories of life, as announced by biologists, natural- 
ists, physiologists, and scientists in general, may be designated as 
follows: 1. Spontaneous Generation; 2. "Omne Vivum ex Ovof 3. 
Pangenesis; 4. Development; 5. The Physical Basis; 6. Biogenesis; 
7. Creation. 

The theory of spontaneous generation is a short cut to results 
without adequate causes ; but at one time it was supported by distin- 
guished scientists, and in lieu of something more specific or satisfac- 
tory, received general though hesitating assent. It was apparently 
demonstrated by such learned experimenters as Prof. Wyman, Dr. 
Bastian, and Prof. H. J. Clark, that the reproduction of infusoria by 
spontaneous generation had taken place, and even Dr. McCosh con- 
sidered the announcement not entirely void of truth. Without de- 
tailing the experiments adduced in support of the theory, it is suffi- 
cient to notify the reader that amoebas, bacteriums, vibrios, and 
monads were said to be produced from liquids heated to such a degree 
that all infusorial life originally in them was destroyed, and that, of 
their own accord, or by spontaneous activity, many of these re- 
appeared. 

The experiments were repeated by others who doubted the results, 
and Prof. Wyman's conclusions were disputed ; and, while material- 
istic science would gladly accept spontaneous generation if it could 
be established, it has been rejected by Huxley, Tyndall, Darwin, 
Dallinger, Prof. Tait, and M. Pasteur. As a theory of the origin of 
life, it is now virtually defunct. 

Scientists have also come to the conclusion that the old formula, 
''Omne Vivum ex Ovo" is not exactly true, for, while the egg plays 



156 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

an important part in the life of the world, certain it is that life is 
produced without the egg, and so often that it is a question whether 
the egg condition is not an exception rather than the rule. Anemones 
and hydras, insects and fishes, originate by budding and self-division, 
processes entirely independent of parental generation or the egg con- 
dition. Allowing, however, that in vertebrates in particular the egg 
is a necessity to life, one might ask, whence the egg^ To accept 
the egg theory is not to solve the genesis of life. 

Mr. Darwin is the exponent of the theory of pangenesis, which 
has been completely shattered by Mivart and Prof. Delphino. He 
held that each organism consists of an incalculable number of organic 
atoms, which had the power of reproduction. These atoms he called 
" gemmules," in order to be original in the creation of a term, but 
the idea he borrowed from Democritus, amplifying it and adapting it 
to the emergencies of modern science. As a single theory of life, 
pangenesis has less in it than spontaneous generation, and has been 
abandoned. 

The larger, more comprehensive theory of life is that known as 
the theory of development, first skeletonized by Lamarck, then clothed 
by the anonymous author of ' ' The Vestiges of the Natural History of 
Creation," and finally adopted as the child of Darwin. As its chief 
expounder and promoter, it bears the name of Darwin, but it must be 
understood that it did not originate with him. In explanation of the 
theory we quote him: "I believe that all animals have descended 
from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal 
or lesser number. Probably all the organic beings which have ever 
lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, 
into which life was first breathed." It is at once seen that this really 
accounts not at all for life, but only for its development. It does 
not go back to the source, but contents itself with the method of its 
successive manifestations. Keeping in mind that the development 
theory per se only proposes to trace the laws or forms of manifested 
life, it is not so objectionable, even though it may be found erroneous 
in that particular ; but when it is strained to account for life itself, 
alleging that it too is the product of development, unbelievers in the 
theory may at least ask for the proof of it. Accepting, if one must, 
the theory as an explanation of cosmical growth, he is at liberty to 
reject it, until the proof is furnished, as an explanation of life itself. 

Closely related to this theory is that more pronounced hypothesis 
of Mr. Huxley, which he designates as the "Physical Basis of Life." 
If all life is the product of protoplasm, or protoplasm is life, as the 
terms of his theory require us to believe, then matter itself not only 
had the "potency and promise of life," but is the fulfillment of life; 



PROTOPLASM— BA THYBIUS— BIOPLASM. 157 

it is life. All substances, Huxley is fond of asserting, consist of car- 
bonic acid, water, and ammonia; or, to speak more correctly in a 
chemical way, of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. All 
living organisms, whether animals or plants, in their chemical sub- 
stance may be reduced to these four elements, but in none of these 
taken singly is the principle of life. How, then, can they produce 
it when combined? When combined " under certain conditions," he 
says, the result is protoplasm, which "exhibits the phenomena of 
life." This word "protoplasm" is borrowed from the Germans, Max 
Schultze especially having used it, and Huxley sees in it the "life- 
stuff" of the world. How far it accounts for life, or whether it is 
life, is the question. Its deficiencies are many, and the admissions 
of Huxley are quite fatal to the theory. He does not distinguish 
between living protoplasm and dead protoplasm, but if there is any 
difference at all between life and death it must apply to animate or 
vital protoplasm and that which is not vital. In that living proto- 
plasm is productive, and dead protoplasm is not productive, a differ- 
ence appears that can not be eradicated ; but Huxley fails to recognize 
it. He is compelled by his theory to state exactly what protoplasm 
is, inasmuch as it is a physical substance, or the vital property of the 
world. Finding it, he should describe it. It is at this point that he 
breaks down, confessing that protoplasm is a product of the vegetable 
world whose chief property is contractility; but in tracing it to the 
vegetable kingdom he surrenders the issue, for, instead of pointing 
out a vital, originating substance, he has only indicated a product, 
which implies an antecedent originating cause. This, therefore, de- 
stroys the protoplastic theory of life. 

Equally fallacious are the theories that substitute bathybius for 
protoplasm, for it utterly fails to bridge the distance between the or- 
ganic and inorganic worlds. Strauss, pressing the question, whether 
the living can be evolved from the non-living, was at first embar- 
rassed for the want of an answer, but like Hackel finally accepted 
bathybius as the connecting link between them. What is bathybius t 
"A sheet of living matter," says Huxley, "enveloping the whole 
earth beneath the seas." As no one has seen this "living matter," 
St. George Mivart pronounces it a "sea-mare's nest." 

Bioplasm is the latest substitute for protoplasm. It is a shapeless, 
structureless substance, with power to convert matter into life. A 
bioplast is a sensitive, generating substance, of a higher order and 
with more specific functions than at first were assigned to protoplasm. 
Protoplasm lost caste because a certain kind of vegetable dullness 
surrounded it ; but the bioplasts are a society of beings, commissioned 
to build worlds, with all they contain. The superior dignity of the 



158 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

bioplastic to the protoplastic theory is very apparent; but the one is 
as objectionable as the other, and even more so, for protoplasm can 
be traced to the vegetable world, but the bioplasts are independent 
creatures that are above revealing their origin. How came the bio- 
plasts? is a crucial question; for, until answered, the source of life 
is still a mystery. 

In the same line is the attempt to explain life by the doctrine of 
the conservation and correlation of forces, which reduces it to a 
physical force, like light, heat, motion, and electricity. The process 
of reduction is simple. It is agreed that heat, light, and motion are 
convertible terms, one being changed into another with perfect ease ; 
and it is affirmed that at no distant day life will be added to the 
series of convertible terms, so that it will be but another word for 
motion, or light, or heat. The discovery of its physical character is 
thus anticipated and prematurely declared. That this conception is 
only in its rudimentary or theoretical stages ought to restrain its 
advocates from a too hasty announcement of the far-off conclusion, 
but science is not given to modest and imperfect statements. 

To this thoroughly materialistic conception there is a stronger ob- 
jection than that it is rudimentary. If life is a purely physical 
force, in correlation with other physical forces, it ought to be easy 
for the chemist to produce it. That he has not produced it; that 
he has not changed the inorganic into the organic, or the non- 
living into the living, is more than a proof of a present incapac- 
ity which may be finally succeeded by an ability to do it; it is a 
proof that life is not a physical resultant, and in no sense a physical 
substance. 

While the scientist may disorganize living matter, so that it be- 
comes non-living matter, he can not reorganize the latter so that it 
becomes the former. The analysis of living matter is within his 
power ; the synthesis of living matter he has not accomplished. He 
may analyze water ; he may synthesize water ; but he can not produce 
a living frog, or bee, or fly. This is the more perplexing because 
science teaches that of the seventy elementary substances, only four 
are involved in the substance of living matter. Why can not the 
scientist so combine them that life in some of its stages will appear? 
The task, stated in terms, does not appear difficult. Given four 
simple elements, out of an infinite variety of possible combinations, 
surely that combination which results in what is called life will be 
found. One might think so, but the key to the combination is still 
undiscovered. The stupendous fact is that, according to his theory, 
with all the materials of life at hand, with every physical element, 
primary and secondary, at his disposal, he is unable to produce the 



RELATION OF LIFE AND ORGANIZATION 159 

first pulsation of life ; and this failure must be taken as the evidence 
of the supreme folly of his conception and the supreme inadequacy 
of the theory. 

In passing let it be noted that in the inorganic world one substance 
never becomes another. Sapphire never turns into silver, and clay 
never turns into sandstone. If inorganic substances never inter- 
change, surely the inorganic never turns into the organic. Materialism 
may dream of the future discovery of the physical basis of life, but 
it comports with the dignity of manhood to reject such dreams in the 
presence of truths that solve the mystery in a more consistent and 
elevating way. 

Ancient philosophy, more excusable than modern, since its dis- 
coveries were fewer, drifted into a materialism respecting life that has 
reappeared in these days, although in a new form. It was held that 
life is a form of matter, but of a higher kind than ordinary matter ; 
but this did not relieve the subject of embarrassment, for matter is 
matter, whatever its form. It was also taught that life is in some 
mysterious way the product of the bodily organism containing it ; in 
other words, that life is a result rather than a cause. This theory 
some of the moderns have adopted, expressing it thus: there is no 
life without organization ; the organization of matter is implicit with 
life ; organization being effected by self-acting forces, life is a phe- 
nomenal result. For this one-sided conclusion materialists are con- 
tending with unusual violence, forgetting or failing to see that possibly 
the truth is the very reverse of the conclusion, namely, that life pre- 
cedes organization, and is the only explanation of the organic world. 
In the azoic period of the earth's history, electricity, heat, and grav- 
itation were probably in operation, governed by the same laws under 
which they now act; matter assumed mathematical forms just as it 
does now ; suns may have blazed in the firmament, as they do now ; but 
matter was unorganized ; that is, the vital principle was absent, and the 
earth was dead. It had form, but organization relates to a principle of 
life. At this point we see the difference between living and non living 
matter ; the latter is unorganized, the former organized. A stone is 
unorganized, a bee is organized. Did the bee organize itself into 
life, or did the life of the bee proceed to incarnate itself in an or- 
ganized form ? Organization signifies life ; life is the sign of organiza- 
tion ; but it is the extreme of philosophical dullness to proclaim that 
organization resulted in life. Verily, there is little difference between 
the ancient and modern schools of philosophy in their teachings 4 re- 
specting the origin of life, and so neither is satisfactory. Epicurus 
and Hackel, Democritus and Huxley, different in their methods of 
research, and also in their forms of expression, are not far apart in 



160 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

their conclusions ; all are materialists, in spite of any sentimental re- 
cantation of materialism, with which some of them, Huxley especially, 
are credited. 

The theory of Biogenesis, or that life springs from life, is one of 
the recent concessions of Tyndall, and Huxley, apparently abandon- 
ing the protoplastic theory, coincides with this latest proposition. 
Biogenesis means that the non-living can not produce the living, but 
that the living has a life-source. This is the vitalistic theory of life 
which promises to crowd out all materialistic views from biology. At one 
time Professor Tyndall declared that the laws which produce the crystal 
will also produce the entire vegetable and animal world. Materialists 
generally reject this bold assumption. A crystal and a lion are two 
things, the vitalistic principle being as conspicuously absent from the 
one as it is present in the other. Vitalism and materialism can not 
co-exist as explanations of life. The latter deals with the non-living 
as the source of life ; the former forever with the living ; the latter 
must bridge the distance between the non-living and the living, a 
feat not yet accomplished ; the latter has no bridges to build, but 
needs to travel upward to one life-giving source of all things. 
Plato in the Phmdo discusses the origin of life in death and the origin 
of death in life, representing the one as contrary to the other, and 
each reproducing the other, from which materialism probably took, its 
cue ; but Plato here teaches the doctrine of the resurrection of the 
dead rather than a materialistic origin of life. Resurrection and 
biogenesis are different ideas ; the one looking forward to the revival of 
life, the other looking backward to the beginning of life. It is the 
beginning of life that now concerns us. 

The vitalistic philosophy points in the right direction, but it is de- 
ficient in its final utterance. It does not entirely lift the veil. It 
still leaves the question of origin unsettled. Another theory is de- 
manded, and without circumlocution 'we announce the theory of 
Creationism as absolutely sufficient in its contents to account for all 
the mystery, magnitude, and magnificence of life, whether of animals, 
plants, or man, Without a positive creation of the vitalistic princi- 
ple, and its introduction into the physical universe by a supervising 
intelligence, it is impossible to account for any thing, or get beyond a 
chain of secondary causes. Given a creating power, ano\ mystery 
ceases ; given a living God, and universal life is solved. Professor 
Agassiz was a creationist from the necessity of the case. The insuf- 
ficiency of all other explanations compelled him to seek refuge in the 
sufficient power and wisdom of Almighty God. Agreed on this, men 
may differ concerning the vital development of the world, and not 
imperil the foundations of faith, or retard the progress of human 



ILLOGICAL DEFINITIONS OF LIFE. 161 

history. Agreed that all life sprang from the one great life, and 
confusion in philosophy disappears. Agreed here, almost any the- 
ory hitherto propounded as an explanation of historical develop- 
ment might be sustained ; spontaneous generation is possible with 
a living God to order it; pangenesis, or any atomic theory, is pos- 
sible with a living God to endow the atoms with life; even the pro- 
toplastic basis might be approved if God is allowed to impart to it 
its life-giving property; and materialism, vitalized by the divine 
spirit, and put under divine control, might be radiant with uni- 
versal truth. 

Such are the philosophic theories respecting the origin of life. 
Until one advances to the biogenetic and creational conceptions of the 
universe, he flounders in misshapen definitions and complex but in- 
complete explanations. Outside of this region of dullness and darkness, 
or inside the realm of religious investigation, one would expect to 
meet with clearer statements, and more satisfactory .conclusions. In 
this expectation one will not be for the most part disappointed ; but 
occasionally an erroneous view is taken, or a compromising explana- 
tion given, even when the highest religion is guiding the investigator 
into the truth. Dr. Noah Porter translates life into soul, but this is 
objectionable, since it will apply only to the spiritual nature of man. 
Vegetable life is not soul-life. Dr. Wythe defines life "as the sum 
of the activities resulting from the union of mind and matter." In 
framing a definition a cautious phraseology is required in order to 
secure accuracy of statement and prevent a misleading influence. To 
use life and soul as synonymous is a high idea, but it is not broad 
enough ; to say that life is the sum of the union of mind and mat- 
ter is certainly not discriminating, for it does not concede that mind 
is independent of matter, nor does it insist that the vital principle is 
not a property of matter. Life is the sum of mind and matter ; 
therefore, it is not either alone. Applied to the vegetable kingdom, 
the definition is faulty, for mind is not ascribed to it at all ; applied 
to man, it makes matter as much an essential as mind. Life is more 
than a sum ; it is not a total of activities. The activities resulting 
from the union of mind and matter are the manifestations of life 
through an organization, by which we predicate life, but with which 
we do not confound life. In some particular cases, and applied nar- 
rowly, life may appear to be the sum of its own manifestations; but 
in a large sense this is confounding results with causes. The material- 
ist interprets life to be the result of organization ; Dr. Wythe inter- 
prets it to be the result of the union of mind and matter, without 
which life would be impossible. Dr. Wythe is not a materialist but 
his interpretation is logically materialistic. 



162 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Dissatisfied with idealistic and materialistic definitions, it is in- 
cumbent upon us to advance a definition, in doing which we confess 
we run the usual risk of failure. However, our estimate of life is in 
very general terms that it is the cause of all physical and intellectual 
manifestation ; that it precedes all organization and is separate from all 
physical forms, having no physical property whatever ; that it is in- 
visible, intangible, the supreme force, superior to magnetism, gravity, 
heat, light and motion, is inconvertible into any thing else, and is 
eternal. It is the 'principle of creation, the breath of God, and 
therefore capable of an infinite variety of forms, phases and mani- 
festations. It ranks law, force, matter, every thing visible, formal, 
phenomenal. It is not a material substance; it is not a combina- 
tion of chemical elements; neither is it a total of manifestations, 
or activities. 

In particular, life is spirit ; its activity is the activity of spirit ; its 
manifestation is the manifestation of spirit. Paul says, " The spirit 
giveth life." This is its origin ; it flows from the fountains of the 
eternal. Life is the stamp of the unseen on the seen. Life is God, 
the sign of God in the world. The living, whether in animals, 
plants, or men, is the proclamation of the living God. 

The word " life " has now a new meaning ; it is the word of words. 
Inspiration is in its bosom ; eternity is in its atmosphere. Defining 
the word thus, we have escaped the usual dilemmas of the definition- 
makers, and have accounted for the appearance of life in a way con- 
sistent and satisfactory to the reason. 

If we consider the kinds of life on the earth, the subject will have 
a practical complexion, but lose none of its philosophic interest. 
Indeed, the interest is heightened, for difficulties multiply as the 
varieties of life are considered in their relation to one another, and in 
their higher relation to a common source. In ordinary phrase, there 
are vegetable life, animal life, human life, intellectual life, spiritual 
life. Is life a unit ? Are these varieties the product of one life ? Is 
there a unity in the life of the world ? Science answers that the four 
elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, compose all kinds 
of bioplastic material, with sometimes the accidental addition of other 
elements, and that bioplasm is the same in appearance, whether it be 
the bioplasm of a geranium, a sponge, an elephant, a dog, a croco- 
dile, a horse, or a man. The microscopic appearance of universal 
bioplasm is doubtless the same, but evidently the power of the bio- 
plasm in each individual is different, or the result would be the same. 
The sameness of bioplastic substance is incompatible with variety. 
The unity of life does not signify bioplastic sameness or similarity. 
In fact, bioplastic life relates only to the animal and vegetable king- 



THE TROUBLES OF EVOLUTION. 163 

doms, while the life that includes or accounts for intellectual and 
spiritual activities is of another kind. 

Beginning with bioplastic life, as thus limited, it is profitable to 
note the difference between it and non-living matter. The distin- 
guishing mark is that inertia belongs to the non-living and spontaneity 
to the living. A piece of quartz illustrates the one, amoeboid motion 
the other. Self-motion characterizes the bioplastic center; inertia 
dominates in the inorganic world. 

Equally conspicuous is the power of reproduction in the living and 
its absence in the non-living. The power of identity also attaches to 
bioplastic life. Living matter, from its law of activity, is like a river, 
ever flowing, and yet bearing the same name and preserving itself. 
Forever sweeping on and changing in appearance, its identity is a 
marked fact in its history. Heraclitus's doctrine of the flux of mat- 
ter has a constant illustration in the realm of bioplasm. With all the 
varieties of living matter, the special peculiarities of the original vi- 
talistic substance predominate, and are ever maintained. There are 
varieties of oak, varieties of roses, varieties of sheep, varieties of in- 
sects, varieties of birds ; but it is noticeable that the law of identity 
is not disturbed. Relationship in varieties is easily traced. 

This leads necessarily to the perplexing but inviting dogma — if it 
may be so termed — of the stability or permanence of species, a dogma 
as perplexing to the evolutionists as it is comforting to Christian 
metaphysicians. Its chief value is its demonstration that life is under 
law, and yet above natural law ; that it has metes and bounds, 
beyond which it will not pass, and that the life- world has a fixed 
order, consistent with apparent variations from it. This is a hard 
lesson for the evolutionist. 

The dogma is not difficult to understand. The animal kingdom 
abounds in species which have not multiplied since the age of man. 
Varieties, many and singular, have multiplied, but the species are 
identical ; that is, fixed, permanent, unchangeable from age to age. 
Evolution, if true, would require the occasional, if not frequent, 
production of new species, but the utmost that it can do is to produce 
new varieties of the same species. If evolution produced species in 
other ages, why not now ? Here the evolutionist stumbles and falls. 
The changes of evolution result in varieties only. The dog is the dog 
in all lands ; the ox is always the ox ; the horse is the horse. The 
fact is all the stronger when it is remembered that man, with all his 
skill and genius, and moved by a scientific purpose to break the law, 
has been unable to undermine the permanence of species in any direc- 
tion. He has not originated any new species, and none have appeared 
during his occupancy of the earth. Species may become extinct, but 



164 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

new species are unknown. The relation of hybrids to species in no 
way disturbs the dogma of the stability of species, for the attempt to 
produce new species results in abnormal products, stamped with ster- 
ility, the sign of nature's protest, and the proof of nature's law in the 
case. This means something. It means that life has its appointed chan- 
nels and limitations; it means the overthrow of the scientific theory of evo- 
lution as an explanation of the genesis of life; it compels a reconstruction 
of the scientific view of creation, and secures the confirmation of the Biblical 
revelation of the same. 

The introduction of species is quite as mysterious as the stability 
of species is perplexing. Any natural process of introduction is bound 
to continue to produce species, while a supernatural process may stop 
with one exercise. This seems really to have been the case. The cre- 
ation of one pair for the propagation of one species is the only refuge 
for the thinker ; the sending down the ages of one line of animals, 
not to be broken by nature or man, but to be preserved amid all its 
changes and varieties, is proof of a creative will and a supervising in- 
telligence. This is creationism again, the inevitable issue of every 
fact in nature. Bioplasm is tinctured with creationism ; the vegeta- 
ble kingdom chants creationism ; the animal kingdom is alive with 
it. The speculation that stability is only apparent, and not real, we 
dismiss as idle. It is proof that there is trouble in the camp of the 
agnostics, and nothing short of a denial of the dogma will answer 
their end. 

It is patent to the reader that living matter is distinguished by the 
power of growth and non-living matter by its absence. Iron does not 
grow; the fern grows. Silver does not grow; the squirrel, the os- 
trish, man grows. Life signifies enlargement, development, change 
of form, and final cause. These no one predicates of non-living 
things. 

If, with these distinctions, we stop, where are we ? The chief 
differences between non-living and bioplastic matter are : as to living 
matter, spontaneity of motion, or power of self-motion, power of re- 
production, power of identity, power of internal development ; as to 
non-living matter, the absence of all these — its negative characteristics, 
its positive characteristic being inertia. The vitalistic principle focal- 
izes itself in a number of concurrent powers, motion, reproduction, 
identity and development, while the non-living substance may be ex- 
pressed best by a single word — inertia. 

From bioplastic to spiritual life is the next step, if we choose to 
take it. Bioplastic life, as seen in vegetables and animals, and in the 
physical structure of man is intermediate between the inorganic or 
non-living world, and the psychological and spiritual life, which dis- 



BIRTH-MARKS OF THE SOUL. 165 

tinguishes man from all below him, and allies him to every thing 
above him. 

Not a few scientists detest classification. It interferes with fancy ; 
it hinders speculation. Geometry, algebra, fixed forms, and fixed 
systems are inconsistent with theoretical science. For this reason 
Hackel condemned the division of matter into organic and inorganic ; 
it made him pause. The classification of life into bioplastic and spir- 
itualistic disturbs the dreams of the materialist, who would run his 
biological thread through all the cells and tissues of all the forms and 
manifestations of life, regarding them all as varieties of one life. He 
insists upon the unity of life at the expense of ineradicable differ- 
ences, but classification compels him to recognize these differences, 
and through them to see varieties of life. His vegetable biology he 
would transmute into psychological biology, but this is a task he has 
not yet accomplished. Just as living matter is distinguished from 
non-living matter, so spiritual life has its differentia, standing out 
from bioplastic forms with a grandeur peculiar to itself, and inde- 
pendent of all physical relations. 

Keener vision will be required to detect the essentia of this high- 
est product of the vitalistic principle, since it is so modest that it 
often refuses to be seen. Between the psychological and the sensational 
life of man the materialist affects to believe that there is no radical 
difference ; but the difference between the non-living and the living is 
not so great as that between the psychological and the bioplastic. 
Psychological law may be in perfect harmony with physical law, just 
as base and soprano in music may be in harmony, but they are not 
the same. If in the process of thinking the brain seems to resemble 
the liver in its processes of secretion, it does not justify the conclusion 
that thought is a physical secretion, and that the mental process is 
physical. Yet modern materialistic philosophy has confounded the 
processes and degraded the thinker into a bioplastic machine. 

The birth-mark of the soul is its consciousness, a recognition of 
itself as distinct from every thing else. The ego and the non-ego, 
the subjective and the objective, become distinct realities to the soul, 
through the avenue of consciousness, and it never confounds them. 
In its normal moods the soul clings to the idea of its separateness or 
exclusiveness from all things else. However rapid and extensive its 
flights through the power of imagination ; however retrospective in 
its thinking ; however distant at times it may seem from itself ; it 
always falls back upon the consciousness of its own individual exist- 
ence. The operations of consciousness may even be unconscious, as 
the mind often indulges in calculations which it does not remember; 
but in either case the fact of consciousness remains. Unconscious 



166 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

calculations, unconscious indulgences, do not interfere with the vice- 
gerency of consciousness. The mind often determines as to the 
beauty of an object by an unconscious process; the individual can 
not explain or express the process by which he reached the conclu- 
sion ; but that he reached it he knows. Thus the consciousness is so 
swift in its ratiocinations, its intuitive conceptions are so electric, its 
discernment of ratio is so immediate and comprehensive, that the 
mind can not report the processes, and even loses sight of the data 
which were employed, rejoicing only in the results, Now, this is not 
a characteristic of bioplastic material. No philosopher attributes con- 
sciousness to a rose, or a wheat-blade. There is spontaneity of 
motion, but this is not self-recognition. There is identity of species, 
or self-preservation, but this is not self-knowledge. The law of 
identity in bioplastic matter is analogous to the law of consciousness in 
soul-life. In both identity is maintained with this difference, namely, 
living matter does not recognize its identity, while the soul does rec- 
ognize its identity. Soul-life is therefore the higher life. 

A still more marked difference is the power of volition, or of 
self-determination in the soul, the analogy to which in bioplasm is its 
spontaneity or the power of self-motion. But living matter is uncon- 
sciously spontaneous ; that is, while its direction is from within, it is 
instinctive rather than voluntarily intelligent. Even the bee build- 
ing its cell after the most correct mathematical principles, displays no 
such intelligent volitional power as the child in determining a moral 
issue. Right here is the abyss between the spontaneous activity of 
bioplastic life, and the volitional power of the soul, which has never 
been bridged. The volitional power in man is exercised with respect 
to moral problems which bioplastic life is not called upon to consider. 
He must analyze the moral quality of actions, and he has the power 
to do it. He must understand the principles of the divinest juris- 
prudence and know how to apply them to the case in hand. He 
must know what law is ; he must know the difference between right 
and wrong, justice and injustice, truth and falsehood, sin and holi- 
ness. He must be able to choose the right and reject the wrong. He 
must see differences, and choose between them. This is a high prerog- 
ative which bioplastic life never exercises. This prerogative, the 
power of alternate choice, the soul fully, freely, and responsibly does 
exercise. This is its highest endowment ; this lifts it above bioplasm. 
In itself, or through external influence, the soul has power to ( change 
its character, a most wonderful result, and such as is never witnessed 
in the purely bioplastic realm. Look at it. A soul is deformed by 
contact with evil ; it is purified by contact with righteous principle. 
What is lovely in it is obscured or brightened, just as evil or right- 



MAN'S PERSONALITY. 167 

eousness plays upon it. It is the subject of change in its depths and 
at its very basis. This change is moral. Now, it is not essential 
whether the change is the result of its own volition or of some helpful 
external agency, or of the influence of environment. The fact of 
change is more important than the agency by which it is produced. 
Solomon at his anointing was different from Solomon on the mount 
of corruption. Saul of Tarsus was not Paul in Ephesus ; that is, 
morally. Yet, the singular fact is that underlying these alternative 
susceptibilities of the soul is the consciousness of its identity, making 
itself manifest in the actual extremes of moral life. No such sus- 
ceptibility pertains to bioplasm ; no such extremes of nature exhibit 
themselves in living matter. The law of identity forbids alternation 
in bioplasm ; in soul-life, paradoxical as it may seem, identity and 
alternation, consciousness and volitional extremes, are compatible, and 
always abide. 

Profounder yet is the characteristic of personality that is attributed 
to spiritualistic life. However defined the word, whether it is regarded 
as the sum of moral powers, or the equipment of conscious being, 
one thing is certain, it belongs not to bioplasm. The palm tree is not 
a person ; the lizaid wears not the sign of personality ; the whale is 
not a person ; the kangaroo claims not the lineage of a person. Per- 
sonality marks the man ; it makes man what he is. By this is he 
separated from the bioplastic realm and enters the divine. This is 
not fiction, or a term of flattery, or the exclamation of self-praise. 
Personality is man's inheritance from God, and he has the right to 
shout over it. 

A complete philosophy will not fail to attempt to account for 
soul-life as it has attempted to account for the non-living and the 
living worlds about us. Evidently the soul is not the product of an 
evolutionary force. As the living does not emerge from the non- 
living, so the spiritual does not issue from the bioplastic. Higher 
forms of life were never produced by lower, although chronologically 
the relation between them may be that of antecedent and consequent. 
The abyss between different kinds of life is not crossed by an 
evolutionary bridge. The chain of life does not extend from bio- 
plasm to soul. 

What then? The old notion of the pre-existence of souls, advo- 
cated by Plato, and taught by Origen, has no lodging-place in 
Christian circles. It opened the door to transmigration, the bane of 
Oriental religions, and robbed the soul of individuality. The doctrine 
of creationism, namely, that God creates the soul at the time the 
human body is ready for it, is not inconsistent with the larger theory 
that he created all life, all matter, and all the forms thereof. To ac- 



168 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

count for non-living matter, creationism is necessary ; to account for 
living matter, bioplastic or spiritual, it is equally indispensable. 

The theory of Traducianism, namely, that the soul is derived in 
part from the souls of the parents, just as the body is, has been ac- 
cepted in some quarters as sufficiently explanatory ; but it is a com- 
promise. Indeed, it resembles the theory that organization precedes 
and accounts for life, which we have rejected. 

All life is the product of creative power. This does not involve 
special creations, except in the case of the soul, for bioplastic life in 
all its forms may be the development of a single principle ; that is, 
the vitalistic principle may be more or less active all along the line, 
and the forms be different. But the soul, essentially different from 
bioplastic substance, can not arise from the vitalistic force as ordi- 
narily manifested in the bioplastic realm ; it requires the special ex- 
ercise of the creative principle. For the bioplastic world the vitalis- 
tic principle under divine supervision is sufficient ; for the soul-world 
the creative principle, which is the vitalistic concentered in a special 
product, working immediately, and not by a process of development, 
is required. Thus all life is the result of the highest force, whether 
ordinarily vitalistic or creative. This force is God. 



CHAPTER VII. 

MAN; OR, ANTHROPOLOGY. 

*' TV TAN," says Kant, " can not think highly enough of man." Of 
iVJL all earthly creatures the greatest, the most commanding, the 
most magnificent ; if an animal only, the most perfect in physiological 
structure and form ; if more than an animal, then a being with an 
investiture of mystery; his "place in nature" still in dispute; his 
place in time still a subject of inquiry ; his history involved in ob- 
scurity ; his destiny yet to be revealed or wrought out ; surely man 
is justified in centering his study in man. Darwin extols him as 
"the wonder and glory of the universe," and a Hebrew writer inti- 
mates that he is only a little lower than the angels in the scale of 
created intelligences. 

Whether man is natural or supernatural, or both, philosophy is 
seeking to determine ; for, as related to the physical world by a ma- 
terial body, he appears to be natural, but, displaying an intellective 
capacity, he appears to be related to the supernatural, also; hence, 
the inquiry concerning man's exact place is fundamental.- In a sense, 



MAN'S RELATION TO NATURE. 169 

he seems to stand on the border line between the two, partaking 
somewhat of both and illustrating the existence of both, and yet be- 
longing wholly to neither. As such he is the connecting link between 
the natural and the supernatural, or nature and spirit ; he is the right 
and left hands of existence, the right clasping the essential or spirit, 
the left joining the phenomenal or nature. Midway between them, 
he is perishable because nature is perishable, and indestructible be- 
cause spirit is indestructible. The double view seems to be according 
to the facts, but neither philosophy nor religion, in their strict terms, 
can accept it. Man must be one or the other ; he belongs to the do- 
main of the natural or the domain of the supernatural. Materialistic 
philosophy descends to the natural estimate, while religion fore- 
glimpses man's supernatural character. 

Widely divergent as are these two general views, they both recog- 
nize man's double relations, accounting for them in harmony with 
their preconceived estimates, and according to facts which seem to 
point in both directions. Man's relation to nature is one of the first 
facts of his existence. What the relation is, or rather what it signi- 
fies, is an entirely different question, for, while the relation appears 
natural, the meaning of it may be supernatural. Materialism in- 
terprets the relation just as it seems, and fails to detect its hidden 
meaning. 

Within the so-called historic period, man has in part demonstrated 
the significance of his relation to nature. He has showD a purpose 
to subdue nature, and nature is fast yielding to his lofty claim of do- 
minion. Nature, stubborn at first, is beginning to feel the spell of 
his presence, the token of supernatural power, for it is the super- 
natural only that can control and subdue the natural. He has fer- 
reted out laws which at one time made sport of him ; he has defined the 
poisonous and the harmless in atmosphere and earth; he has changed 
marshes into landscapes of beauty, deserts into fruitful gardens, and 
made the ocean a highway of travel for all nations. At no distant 
day the conquest of earth's forces will be complete, and she will 
acknowledge the right of dominion exercised by her new master. 
Over the vegetable, mineral, and animal kingdoms, he will wave the 
scepter of power, and they will yield to his authority and minister to 
his wants. Crystal, insect, bird, reptile, quadruped, flower, fern, 
plant, moss, tree, and grass, will tender an ovation to the human 
ruler, and surrender to his government. By this is not meant that 
nature in its essentia will be changed, but only that the agreement 
between man and nature will be specific, and the latter will be subor- 
dinated to the former. 

During the growth of this supremacy over nature, man also has 



170 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

waxed in strength, increased in wisdom, and is working out in his 
history ends higher than the exclusively natural. Which is the more 
wonderful, man's command over nature, or his self-development, it is 
difficult to determine. 

Back of man's relation to nature is the inquiry of his origin, in 
which are involved all the facts of history, all the theories of philo- 
sophic speculation, and all the revelations of inspired penmen. None 
of these can be overlooked if a true account of man's origin is ob- 
tained. The field is vast, the theories are many and conflicting, and the 
facts themselves somewhat discordant or perplexingly difficult to trace 
and establish. The statement needs no proof that the Biblical and 
philosophical representations of the subject are in disagreement, and 
indeed at such variance that, accepting one account, the student is 
obliged to reject the other. This is unfortunate, for the two views 
ought to harmonize, so that the believer in the Biblical view may rest 
his faith on a philosophical basis, and the philosophical advocate sup- 
port himself by the records of inspiration. 

The disclosures of philosophy relate to four aspects: 1. The Origin 
of Man; II. The Character of Man; III. The Antiquity of Man; 
IV. The Destiny of Man. 

Concerning the origin of man, there is wanting a uniformity of 
opinion among philosophic thinkers, many of whom seem to be im- 
pelled only by an antagonistic spirit to the Biblical representation ; 
others are almost in harmony with it. As a whole, however, the 
philosophical conception is void of the Biblical spirit, and as Rome 
debased her coin when in the decline, so the philosophic conception 
is grosser and more materialistic as philosophy itself inclines to ma- 
terialism. The following theories include the more prominent of 
those which may be found among the thinkers: 1. The Mechanical 
theory of the world ; 2. The theory of Descent, known as Darwinism ; 
3. The theory of Transcendence, or that of Strauss ; 4. The Teleo- 
logical view, or man the end of nature. In the mechanical theory, 
as in a womb, lie all other theories of a materialistic complexion, for 
it includes all creation from the polyp to man, and accounts for all 
in the same way. The teleological interpretation of nature has re- 
acted in certain circles, resulting in the elimination of the doctrine of 
a personal Creator and in a monistic conception of the universe. All 
reactions from theological conceptions are materialistic in their teach- 
ings. Not intending that evolution as propounded by him should 
furnish the basis for atheistic materialism, Mr. Darwin has been used 
by Hackel, Biichner, and others, to sustain the attack on the teleological 
philosophy and the theological conception of the world. Nature has 
been credited with certain independent impulses to life and order, 



ORIGIN OF MAN 171 

which in their self-initiated activity produced the worlds which now 
compose the clusters of the firmament, with all else that exists. 
Nature is its own creation. By virtue of this predisposition to devel- 
opment, both the organic and the inorganic have resulted ; and, accord- 
ing to Hackel, so prominent is the monistic principle in matter that 
the scientific distinction between the organic and inorganic is a delu- 
sion, having no reality in fact. All things are one, or the emanation 
of a principle of unity that presides throughout the universe. In the 
face of the fact that the distance between the organic and inorganic 
has never been spanned, it is asserted that there is no difference be- 
tween them, and that the cosmical spirit is one and indivisible. To 
this theory of unity we might subscribe if it were qualified, and if in 
its application to nature certain facts were not ignored. To a theory 
of monism that eliminates the teleological principle, and especially 
that dispenses with intelligent supervision by endowing matter with 
life propensities, we can not subscribe, for it asks us to believe in 
a self-acting universe, which is a most stupendous absurdity. 

The bearing of the monistic or mechanical theory on the origin of 
man is quite apparent. It includes in its sweep all creatures — man, 
bird, beast, fish, and creeping thing. It classifies nothing ; it masses 
creation under one banner. Nature is producer and product ; man is 
involved in nature. Whatever will account for nature as a whole 
will account for man as an individual of nature ; whatever will ac- 
count for any thing will account for every thing. Man was not created 
as Moses teaches — his " foundations are in the dust;" he is the result 
of the complicated forces of a self-acting world, and is as much an acci- 
dent as a logical product. Certainly, nature did not intend to make 
man, for this is teleology; hence, he was a surprise even to nature. 
Acting in a different manner, nature's forces would have produced a 
different kind of being from man, or no being at all. The mechanical 
theory of the world involves the accidental, and not the intended or 
inevitable, appearance of man. 

The theory of "descent," formerly adopted by Darwin, is a more 
precise determination of man's origin, and at one time threatened to 
supersede the Biblical account. It would be premature to announce 
its overthrow, but certainly the theory has not been sufficiently sus- 
tained. In his earlier studies, Mr. Darwin had no intention of ex- 
cluding the reign of a Creator and Preserver from the realm of 
nature, and even his latest utterances are not atheistic. He meant 
not to be materialist or atheist. His original thought was that 
man is in the line of animal succession, descending — ascending is a 
truer term — from the animal kingdom, and developing as animals do 
into his present position in nature. The superiority of man to ani- 



172 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

mals is no proof of a different origin, but proof of a larger develop- 
ment according to the laws of nature. To sustain this theory he 
pointed out the signs of relationship between man and animals, in 
habits, in hygienic laws, in structural likenesses, and in common 
physiological vices and virtues. He attempts to show that "man is 
constructed on the same general type or model as other mammals;" 
that his skeleton resembles that of the seal ; that he can receive from 
and communicate to animals certain diseases, as hydrophobia, cholera, 
variola; that "he passes through the same phases of embryological 
development;" that he "retains many rudimentary and useless 
structures which no doubt were once serviceable ;" and that he is 
"descended from some lower form, notwithstanding that connecting 
links have not hitherto been discovered." The physical relationship 
is quite fairly sustained. 

A psychological relationship is more difficult to establish, but Dar- 
win eagerly seeks for facts to support it. He declares that animals 
have the same senses as men; "similar passions, affections, and emo- 
tions ; they possess the same faculties of imitation, attention, delibera- 
tion, choice, memory, imagination, the association of ideas, and reason, 
though in very different degrees;" they are liable to insanity also. It 
is not certain that Darwin is correct in these statements, for, in order 
to sustain them, he must abolish well-settled distinctions between instinct 
and rational intelligence, which his theory compelled him to do. As 
to self-consciousness, the ingrain idea of personality, Darwin was not 
bold enough to allow that it belonged to the animal kingdom. "No 
animal is self-conscious," he says, "if by this term it is implied that he 
reflects on such points as whence he comes, or whither he will go, or 
what is life and death ;" but self-consciousness does include reflection on 
the questions of past, present, and future, or life and death. Belief in 
self is so intense, says Spencer, that "no hypothesis enables us to escape" 
it. This is the dividing line between a man and an animal : the one is 
self-conscious in the highest sense, embracing past and future ; the other 
is self-conscious, if at all, with respect to the present. The psycholog- 
ical relationship has not been made out quite to our satisfaction. 

The difficulty grows as one looks for signs of moral relationship 
with the animal kingdom. In no hesitating spirit, however, Mr. 
Darwin approaches the problem and disposes of it by referring the 
origin of the moral nature in man to the operation of the social 
forces; "the foundation lies in the social instincts." According to 
this view, moral ideas are not instinctive or intuitional, but the result 
of social development which has been going on from the earliest ages 
until now. Besides, he discovers the counterpart of moral emotions, 
or the moral nature of man, in animals ; he points to affection, sym- 



THE THEORY OF "DESCENT." 173 

pathy, shame, remorse, and the family tie, in the animal kingdom. 
Mr. Huxley relates an incident to show that a gibbon has a con- 
science. Thus man is a descendant of the animal kingdom, is per se 
an animal. 

The theory of "descent" is already stereotyped in science and 
philosophy. Karl Vogt has sketched man's pedigree from the ape, and 
Darwin contrasting monkeys and savages, concluded that descent from 
the former would be more honorable to our race than descent from the 
latter. In a coarse and vehement style Hackel vindicates the theory, 
pointing out twenty-two stages of development from the lowest form 
of animal life to man, and apparently connecting them without any 
missing links ; but scientists have shown the error of the stages, prov- 
ing that some of them do not exist in nature. 

The tracing of man's genealogy is an imperative requirement 
of evolution. Darwin himself accepted such a task, but met with 
some difficulty when it became necessary to pass from invertebrates 
to vertebrates. The passage between the ascidse and the lancelet fish 
was easily traced ; from fish came amphibia ; from the amphibia the 
reptilia; these developed into marsupialia; these developed into lemurs 
or half-apes; from these a variety of apes issued; then the gibbon 
and the gorilla ; then one link more ; then man. But this schedule of 
development is by no means complete, as others have shown, and it 
fails just where demonstration is the most imperative. 

Huxley espouses "descent," tracing the development of the ani- 
mal kingdom through man-like apes or anthropoids until its consumma- 
tion is reached in man. For his purposes, he exposes the physiologi- 
cal likeness of the gibbon, the ourang, the chimpanzee, and the 
gorilla to the human skeleton, affirming in the end that structural 
similarity establishes physical relationship or genealogical descent. He 
insists also that " the mode of origin and the early stages of the de- 
velopment of man are identical with those of the animals immediately 
below him in the scale," and concludes that "secondary causes" are 
sufficient to account for the phenomena of the universe, man 
included. 

As the Athenians who boasted that they sprung from the earth 
wore, as a symbol, a grasshopper in their hair, so those moderns who 
espouse the animal theory of the origin of man should engrave an 
anthropoid on their coat-of-arms. 

Darwin did not intend that " descent " should undermine the 
theistic notion, and Wallace still later insists that they are compatible ; 
but Hackel and Huxley crush out the idea of a personal Creator in 
the development of the universe. We do not assume that a theory 
which carried to the extreme invalidates a fundamental religious idea 



174 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

is to be rejected but it is a suspicious theory, and can not be fully- 
accepted without further proof. 

Against the theory of " descent," as a whole, we offer the following 
consideration or two, which make it difficult to accept it ; indeed, until 
certain facts shall have been discovered, the theory is absolutely null 
and void. As it is, it has only a tentative character. No geologist 
claims that fossils have been found that indicate a passage from lower 
organizations into man ; it is the great grief of materialistic scien- 
tists that a "missing link "is still missing between the gorilla and 
man. To assume that such a link will be found is unphilosophical. 
Until it is found, " descent " fails of its purpose. 

Inasmuch as a wide intellectual and moral gap exists between man 
and the animal kingdom, some geologists are disposed to refer man 
to a " distinct kingdom in nature." Sir Charles Lyell quotes approv- 
ingly the "reasoning of M. Quatrefages" on this proposition. Man 
constitutes a kingdom himself, the kingdom of improving reason, of 
intellectual activity, of spiritual life. This certainly is an inde- 
pendent view, destructive of " descent," and in harmony with the 
Biblical interpretation. 

The character of the ' ' primitive " man is usually employed in de- 
fense of the "development" theory, inasmuch as it is taken for 
granted that he was but a little in advance of an animal. Professor 
Whitney, however, insists that man, whether found in pliocene or 
post-pliocene or recent formations is nothing but man. Sir J. Lubbock 
has certainly made out a case against savages or barbarians, but his 
volume of facts goes not back of historic times and only proves the 
degeneracy of man, not what he was originally. The man of the 
' ' stone age " was probably less civilized than the man of the ' 'bronze 
age," and the latter was behind the man of the " iron age," but who 
claims, unless he is a materialist, that the palaeolithic man was the 
original man, or even a type of him? After the "ice epoch" was a 
long " watery epoch," or between the glacial period and the stone 
man — between the original man and the post-diluvian man — was the 
age of a splendid race, followed by a degenerate people, or the savages 
who, beginning with or constituting the stone age, remain until 
the present time. 

Of the primeval inhabitants no remains have been found, unless 
language, the family institution, and the religious idea make up a 
portion of their legacy. Of monuments there is none; of works 
of art, of philosophy, poetry, there is none; but language, home 
and religion are the imperishable mementoes of that early race, in- 
herited by savages, and transmitted to all nations, civilizing and 
elevating them. Concerning language it must be said that like 



THE THEORY OF STRAUSS. 175 

the hieroglyphs of Egypt the oldest are the best, that is, the first 
languages have needed no improvement. The perfection of the 
primitive languages speaks loudly for a perfect people who used them, 
and overwhelms the theory of evolution in complete ruin. The 
historic course of the early languages shows a descent, or degrada- 
tion, and the historic course of mankind shows also a similar descent 
or degradation, which is contrary to the germinal idea of Darwin, 
who means by descent the ascent of the race. But the palaeolithic 
man was not an ascent ; he was a descent, like his language ; he was 
a savage, preserving language, home, and religion, but in the grossest 
forms, the purification of which has required the work of many gen- 
erations. "Descent" breaks down in language, the family institution, and 
the religious idea; and in the same way it breaks at a vital point in 
the history of man. It is a guess, not a fact. 

The transcendental theory of Strauss is essentially materialistic, a 
modified evolutionary process resulting in man. He speaks of the 
"ascending evolution of nature," and intimates that the scientist con- 
ceives of the possibility of the development of the organic from the 
inorganic, but he confesses "enduring ignorance" of the origin of 
consciousness. Evolution can not explain self-consciousness. It ex- 
plains man, as a whole, however. He says : "As nature can not go 
higher, she would go inwards" — man is the limitation, the end of 
evolution. Again he says: "In man nature endeavored, not merely 
to exalt, but to transcend herself;" and, rising in spite of his ma- 
terialistic preferences, he shouts, "do not forget for a moment that 
thou art human ; not merely a natural production." Is man a "nat- 
ural production," like a tree, or cloud, or bird, or frog, or flower? 
According to the mechanical theory of the world, and according to 
the theory of "descent," as manipulated by the atheists, he is a "nat- 
ural production," nothing more; but, according to Strauss in his 
highest mood, he is "human," implying, if it mean any thing, some- 
thing more than a natural result. Nature transcended herself in 
man; she could go no higher, and hence turned "inwards." The 
highest expression of evolution or creative force is man. This much 
Strauss means ; and, notwithstanding his infidelic spirit, we accept 
him as an intermediate teacher between Hackel and Owen ; or, in 
broader phrase, as a step from rank materialism to theism. He d;d 
not intend to occupy this middle ground, but the first step toward 
a true conception of man is his relation to nature— just the step 
Strauss took. In his effort to abandon the Biblical account of miracu- 
lous creation, he swings to materialism, but finds in his last analysis 
of man an element that materialism can not explain, and leaves it 
without explanation. This is the weakness of scientific theories in 



176 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

general, that the human element in man, entirely different from the 
natural or animal element, they can not explain ; or, if they attempt 
explanation they refer it to a secondary cause, which may account for 
man as an improved descendant of the kingdom of nature. 

The last view claiming notice is teleological in spirit and scientific 
in form. Louis Agassiz expresses it thus: "Man is the purpose to- 
ward which the whole animal creation tends from the first appearance 
of the first paleozoic fish." By this he does not mean that man was 
the last in a series of natural developments, partaking of the spirit 
of the whole, and the inevitable outgrowth of it all — this were but 
the mechanician's view over again; but he means that nature was 
planned with reference to man; that the earth was prepared for his 
abode; and that, beginning back in the early ages, the purpose to 
adjust the world to its future inhabitant is evident. This is a broad 
view of nature, and a broader view of man than the materialists can 
allow. It is the teleological view of creation which excites Hackel, 
and convulses him with rage. He can not for a moment consent to 
it. He says that ' ' since the awakening of human consciousness, hu- 
man vanity" has insisted that man is the main purpose of terrestial 
life, but it is a baseless presumption! 

The teleological view of creation is inspiring ; at least it is more 
elevating in its effect to think that man is the end or purpose of na- 
ture, than that he is the product of nature. Richard Owen, prefer- 
ring the former, exclaims: "Man, from the beginning of organisms, 
was ideally present upon the earth." The ideal aim of nature, under 
the intelligent supervision of a personal Creator and Ruler, was 
preparation for an inhabitant it could not produce, but who would in 
time appear through the intervention and by the appointment of that 
Creator and Lord. This waiting of nature for its master, to be intro- 
duced by a higher power, is a finer conception than that of the effort 
of nature to produce man as a higher organism than brutes. Between 
the two theories or conceptions, whether man is the product of nature, 
or the end of nature ; whether he is in the line of animal succession, 
or independent of it and appointed over it ; whether he developed, as 
Hackel insists, or was ideally present from the beginning, as Owen 
finely phrases it, one must choose, or have no conception at all. The 
four theories here considered are reducible to two : man is the product 
of nature, or the purpose of nature. These two theories are the height 
and depth of philosophic and scientific conclusion respecting man ; 
they vibrate between a materialistic, atheistic, monistic conception, 
and an ideal or teleological theory of his origin, the latter being in 
harmony with the theological conception that will have consideration 
later in the volume. The gospel of monism, as preached by Hackel, 



EXPLANATION OF MAN'S HIGHER NATURE. 177 

Huxley, evolutionists in general, or the gospel of ideal teleology, 
already foreshadowed in the scientific hypotheses of Agassiz, Owen, 
and Rudolf Schmid, will be the scientific gospel of the future, with 
the probabilities in favor of the latter. 

Our next duty is to ascertain the interpretation put by philosophy 
upon the intellectual and moral nature of man, to know whether, 
even allowing that the physical man has an animalic basis, his higher 
nature is the resultant of animalic agencies, or has an independent 
basis. Man's greatness is a supreme fact. Plato affirms that the 
mind is the man, and Hamilton declares there is nothing great but 
mind. Man's greatness, therefore, is the greatness of mind. Exactly 
what mind is, under what laws it exists and operates, we consider 
elsewhere, while here we must consider it only in connection with 
those materialistic theories which propose to account for it. It may 
be supposed that the theory that will account for man at all will ac- 
count for the whole man ; that his character is so involved in his 
origin that one theory only is required to explain both. We shall 
not insist that two origins are demanded, one for the body, and an- 
other for the intellectual and moral nature ; one origin is sufficient. 
The cause that produced man produced all there is of him. If he is 
a descendant of the animal kingdom, then whatever he is is a devel- 
opment of an animalic nature ; otherwise he is not such descendant, 
and another history must be invoked. As we have seen, Darwin 
undertook to explain the higher nature of man in harmony with the 
theory of "descent," but the proof is not conclusive that intellect, 
conscience, volition, self-determination, and self-consciousness, are the 
products of development, or are natural states evolved through 
natural processes. The physical man may consist of solid matter 
held in solution in about six pails of water, but the intellectual and 
moral qualities of man can not be reduced to chemical proportions 
or physical affinities. 

The unity of the higher nature is a troublesome fact to the ma- 
terialists, for it requires that the theory that will explain the intellec- 
tual nature will explain the moral also ; but while they persuade 
themselves that thought is the result of molecular action, or mere 
nervous force, they find it difficult to explain conscience and moral 
self-determination in the same way. Hence, they are driven to manu- 
facture two theories, or, in the language of Strauss, confess "enduring 
ignorance." Hartley and James Mill heralded the theory that thought 
is the product of brain organism, while Bain elaborated it into a nerv- 
ous result; but none of them explains consciousness, or memory, or 
imagination in that way. However far the psychologists go, they 
always stop before they reach the end. True, in mere terms, the 

12 



178 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

psychical character of man has been reduced by the empiricists 
to a physiological basis, but it is a theoretical reduction only. 
Thought is a physical play; mental and nervous action are inter- 
changeable terms ; affection, fear, hope, joy, sorrow, are chemical 
results, the product of altered molecular conditions. T. Starr King, 
commenting on the sublimated theory, said : ' ' When a lady scolds, a 
man has to face only a few puffs of articulate carbonic acid, but her 
weeping is liquid lightning." If thought and feeling are physical 
states, superinduced by sensation, or the interaction of the molecular 
forces, it is not far, so the psychologist imagines, to the explanation 
of the moral states, which may be also the play of differently directed 
nervous sensibilities. This is only an inference, however ; the proof 
is still wanting. 

For an explanation of the moral attributes of man we have : 
1. The Principle of Association, enunciated by Bain; 2. The Law of 
Social Development, proclaimed by Darwin ; 3. The theory of Evo- 
lution, adopted by Spencer. Differing as these do in details, they 
are closely related, and possess the same value, since they all reject 
the notion of an independent basis for the higher nature of man. It 
makes little difference whether the moral nature originated in intel- 
lectual exercise, or bloomed from the social instincts, or was evolved 
by physical processes, the result is the same, the materialism of hu- 
man nature. In none of these theories is there room for providential 
endowments, or special creative forces, or the need of divine inter- 
position in equipping man for rightful sovereignty, or clothing him 
with a noble dignity. Against all these theories we present the 
plausible conjecture, supported by religious revelation or teaching, 
that man's moral nature was in him ab initio, and its presence can 
not be accounted for by any theory of development whatever. Sir J. 
Lubbock, it is true, asserts that the lowest savages seem to him to be 
"almost entirely wanting in moral feeling," while Mr. Wallace points 
out that our civilized populations, progressing intellectually, "have 
not advanced beyond the savage code of morals, and have in many 
cases sunk below it." Lord Karnes is of the opinion that the moral 
sense is native to man ; Prof. Winchell speaks of it as intuitional. 
This is all that we now care to claim. Whether the primitive inhabi- 
tants of the earth had a profound or native sense of the divine 
sovereignty, or believed in the immortality of the soul, does not belong 
to the simple inquiry concerning a moral sense in man ; and even 
were they involved in the inquiry, Lubbock's instances of atheism, or 
rather ignorance of God, only prove the extinction or reduction of 
the moral idea, and not that it did not originally exist. Nothing has 
been adduced and no example cited, to disprove the conjecture that 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 179 

the moral idea did not domiDate in the earliest inhabitants of the 
globe. If it was a reigning idea as far back as history can conduct 
us, then it is difficult to establish that it is a development. Its re- 
finement may be the result of a developing process; its existence is 
another thing, and is implicit with a miraculous suspicion. What 
are the conclusions of philosophy respecting the character of man? 
It traces his physical body to the ancestry of apes; it converts intellectual 
processes into nervous irritations; it represents the moral faculties as the 
outcome of intellectual and social interactions ; and contentedly suspends its 
investigation with the play. of secondary causes. 

No study of man is complete that omits a searching inquiry into 
his antiquity, since the fate of many theories is involved in it. His 
appearance on earth was the beginning of a new lordship, and a new 
life on the planet. Could it be ascertained about when he appeared, 
controversy over correlated hypotheses would end, and the traditional 
account would be overthrown or confirmed. It is a singular fact that 
the Biblical account can be readily and consistently adjusted to a 
brief or long antiquity, while a short antiquity would be utterly and 
ruinously subversive of all materialistic and evolutionary suppositions, 
since they require indefinite periods of time for the accomplishment 
of their tasks. Take the conscience alone — a million years would be 
none too long for its evolution, even from a potential to the actual 
state. The stone-wall fact is, that if man first appeared seven thou- 
sand years ago, then the web of materialism is torn into threads. 
Merely as a religious problem, the Bible has been interpreted to settle 
in favor of a short antiquity, but no violence would be done either 
its chronology or history to lengthen it. As a scientific question, the 
antiquity of man has been pushed back into the misty periods of the 
fossiliferous ages, because on that hypothesis other hypotheses depend 
for vitality. Unfortunately, the subject has not been considered ex- 
cept in its bearings on some heretical scientific notion, and the result 
has been a false interpretation of the facts, as they were discovered, 
or a mere conjecture of facts when none were found. A Biblicist 
should have no anxiety either way, for it is immaterial whether the 
scientific antiquity be overthrown or not, except as it tends to sup- 
port evolution. In any event, and whatever the final discovery, the 
Bible will be found in happy concordance with it. The scientific 
spirit may be hostile to the Biblical interpretation, but the scientific 
result can not be contrary to the Biblical truth. The Bible will 
stand, whatever science may find ; philosophy can not stand if science 
finally reduces man's antiquity to a very short period. This being 
the case, the defenders of the Biblical account are disposed quietly to 
wait until scientific exploration and research have submitted all the 



180 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

facts, for this is a question of fact, not of opinion. On the other 
hand, philosophy, seeing its fate depends upon the specific favor of 
scientific elaboration and deduction, is in no indifferent mood when 
new facts are announced, for it lives only as they are propitious. 

What, at this stage of research, are the scientific facts touching the 
antiquity of man ? Are they bulwarking philosophic speculation, or 
buttressing the Biblical interpretation ? If the final verdict of science 
should be opposed to both the current philosophical and theological 
interpretations, asserting a middle view, would not the gods rather 
laugh than weep ? Precisely to such an overturning, science seems, 
however unwillingly, to conduct us. Within fifty years past a scien- 
tific revolution concerning man has taken place, leaving us the option 
of accepting an interminable antiquity, or a modified Biblical inter- 
pretation. Within this period the geologists have not been idle, but 
in an enthusiastic spirit they have gone to the extreme of belief in 
the age of man, supporting it by discoveries that for the time 
appeared authentic and declaratory. That the prehistoric antiquity 
which they avowed for man was contradictory of religious traditions, 
and might unsettle faith in all religious teaching, did not concern 
them ; with consequences they had nothing to do. Vulnerable as 
are the inferences drawn from the facts, the geologists deserve credit 
for their persevering industry in searching the fields of nature for 
testimony to the age of the human race, and they have enriched our 
knowledge by their discoveries. Carried forward by a scientific en- 
thusiasm that knows no quenching, scientists began explorations in 
geological fields for ethnological purposes, gathering facts from all 
quarters of the globe and turning nations into fact-seekers. Caves 
were explored ; peat bogs were upturned ; tumuli were sifted of their 
contents ; even the bottoms of the oceans were dragged ; deserts 
were crossed ; river gravels were analyzed ; every climate, every zone, 
and every geological stratum was inspected, and the crust of the 
earth was struck with a hammer as if it would ring back the answer 
of the antiquity of man. The results were wonderful, and, as the 
range of investigation was no " pent-up Utica," the inferences ought 
to have been decisive. 

What are the results of the scientific travail ? Are they philo- 
sophically anthropocentric, or do they vindicate the standard Biblical 
interpretation ? The answer to these questions can not be given in a 
word. The discovery of facts is one thing ; the inference from them 
is another ; and the process by which a conclusion is reached, or the 
rule of inference, is still another, and indeed the vital feature. The 
general geological rule is to estimate the age of fossils by the relative 
age of the stratum in which they are found; for instance, whatever 



STONE, BRONZE, AND IRON AGES. 181 

is found in the Silurian stratum must be much older than what is 
found in the Post- tertiary. This seems like a safe rule, but it has 
led to extravagant calculations. M. Mortillet, by this rule, has 
figured that man appeared 240,000 years ago ! Sir Charles Lyell es- 
timated human relics in the valley of the Somme to be 800,000 years 
old ! Mr. A. R. Wallace estimated the age of some flint implements 
found in a cavern at Torquay, at 500,000 years ! The weakness of 
the rule is, that whatever conclusion is reached, it is only relative, 
not absolute. There is no starting-point for a mathematical calcula- 
lation. It has not been ascertained how old any particular stratum 
is, nor can it be, for nature has not dated its works. Hence, the 
conclusions are suppositions and have only a relative value. 

Geologists are fond of alluding to what they call the stone, 
bronze, and iron ages, periods when the inhabitants of the earth 
manufactured their implements after rude patterns, and advanced 
slowly toward civilization. Mr. Southall believes that these ages 
were largely contemporaneous, and not historically successional. He 
goes so far as to deny the existence of a bronze age, regarding it as 
merely imaginary. Especially is there no proof of a bronze age in 
England, Switzerland, Russia, and other parts of Europe. In proof 
of the contemporaneous character of the Ages, he cites the fact that 
the tumuli of Russia abound in stone, bronze, and iron implements, 
and that while one race was using stone, another at the same time 
was using iron. Dr. Schliemann, in unearthing layers at Troy and 
Mycenae, found stone implements in the top layers and bronze in the 
fourth stratum below, showing that bronze preceded stone, or the 
stone age was last instead of first. This shows the unreliability of 
this kind of argument. The Stone Age, in fact, still exists. Finding 
human implements in strata, or caves, or bogs, whose age they 
thought they knew, the Swiss geologists especially began the work of 
calculation respecting the antiquity of the people of those periods ; 
and M. Morlot concludes that the stone age represents five or six 
thousand years, and the bronze age three or four thousand more. If 
contemporaneous, they may represent three thousand years. It is 
not very difficult to demonstrate that the Palaeolithic man so-called, 
was an average man, if the size of the skull is an indication of 
character ; and when it is remembered that he used a needle and 
thread in making his clothing, loved song, and made instruments of 
music, manufactured implements out of wood as well as stone, and 
reverenced the memory of the dead, he must not be too harshly 
judged in this day. At all events, it is clear that he himself is not 
a proof of even a prehistoric antiquity of any great length. Another 
estimate has been made in Egypt, inasmuch as pottery and even 



182 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY, 

works of art, have been found that, measured by the geological rule, 
point to a civilization that must have existed thirty thousand years 
ago; but Sir Charles Lyell considers the " chronometric scale" un- 
satisfactory. No absolute "chronometric scale" for the measurement 
of strata has been found ; this is the difficulty. 

Much has been made of relics found in the peat in the Somme 
Valley in France, but Mr. Southall points to the fact that Roman 
bricks have been found below the peat, proving that it is a modern, 
instead of an ancient deposit, as was claimed. In certain alluvial 
deposits, hatchets, knives, and the bones of extinct mammalia have 
been found, showing that the people who made the hatchets were 
contemporaneous with the extinct mammalia; and, as it is assumed 
that the latter became extinct thousands of years ago, so man 
must have been living then. This is a safer rule of inference than 
the other, but our confidence in it is shaken by the supposition, 
justified by the history of man, that the mammalia became extinct 
by virtue of man's opposition ; he destroyed the wild beasts as they 
interfered with his progress ; and, instead of showing that he is as 
old as they were, it shows that they disappeared when he appeared, 
and that his antiquity is much less than theirs. The theory has been 
disturbed recently by the discovery that many supposed extinct 
animals are not extinct, as the elephant, lion, bear, hyena, etc., so 
that an argument founded on the remains of these extinct (?) species 
needs reconstruction. "There are more false facts," says Cullen, 
"current in the world, than false theories." We have here an ex- 
ample of "false facts." Besides, Prof. Winchell points out that 
extinctions of species have occurred within the historic period, as the 
great birds of New Zealand, proving that the argument from " extinct 
species" is of little account to the antiquarian. Prof. Southall adds 
that the "extinct" reindeer was found in Germany in the time of 
Csesar and that the cave horse still exists. Of a similar character is 
the argument drawn from megalithic monuments and tumuli, 
scattered all over the globe, which the geologists have interpreted to 
indicate an extravagant antiquity ; but Mr. Southall reduces the 
argument to very small proportions by pointing out, historically, their 
origin, the names of their builders, and the purposes of many of the 
monuments and tombs. Mr. Worsade assigns twenty-five hundred 
years to some woolen garments found in the cromlechs in Denmark, 
but it has been shown that they date from the fifth century ! 

Still another and, as it seems to us, fatal objection to the two 
geological rules above mentioned, is the paucity of human remains in 
the strata, caves, and glacial layers, relied upon to establish a great 
antiquity for man. When it is remembered how abundant are the 



HUMAN REMAINS. 183 

remains of reptiles, fishes, and mammoths in these strata, the absence 
of human remains provokes astonishment, and is not easily explained 
except on the hypothesis that man was the latest arrival on the earth, 
and has not been here long enough to become a fossil, or to crowd 
the crust with his remains. This fact troubled Sir Charles Lyell, 
who attempted to account for it in part by the dissolution of 
human skeletons into dust ; also by cremation, a mode of disposition 
of the dead among the primitive inhabitants, and by destruction, by 
fishes and animals, who devoured bones and digested them. It seems 
not to have occurred -to him that such causes, if sufficient to destroy 
human remains, would be sufficient greatly to limit animal remains, 
but they are found in abundance. Struggling with the fact he ad- 
mits the "extreme imperfection of the geological record," but " con- 
fidently expects" that the " older alluvium of the European valleys" 
will in due time exhibit human remains in such quantities as to 
satisfy the demands of the advocates of a long antiquity ! This is 
pure conjecture. 

Are there no human remains at all? Sir Charles Lyell dwells at 
length upon the age of the " fossil man of Denise," and, from a human 
bone found on the banks of the Mississippi River, concludes that 
man's antiquity dates back to the " mastodon and megalonyx." Some 
remains were exhumed near Maestricht, but he saw no evidence of 
antiquity in them. 

Geologists refer to an old skull found in a cave near Dusseldorf 
in proof of the antiquity of man ; but it is not certain whether it is 
the skull of a man or an ape. If of a man, as the forehead would 
indicate, it does not establish antiquity ; for it is the skull of an old 
man, or not of a man at all. The proofs required to establish the exist- 
ence of an old man are different from those required to establish the exist- 
ence of an old race. Neither from the few human skulls nor from 
the many human implements found in the crust of the earth is it 
possible to construct an argument in favor of a high antiquity for the 
race. On the contrary, the geological evidence seems to indicate a 
brief antiquity, which can be lengthened only by a torture of the 
facts. Huxley says that the evidence that assigns the first appear- 
ance of man anterior to the drift period is of a very " dubious char- 
acter," and Nicholson designates a post-glacial period for that appear- 
ance. The geologists have well-nigh established the conclusion that 
the Ice Period began six or seven thousand years ago, and if man 
appeared at the close of the Ice Period, his presence on the earth is 
reduced to about six thousand years, a figure singularly coincident 
with that of the Biblical interpretation. Mr. Southall has calculated 
that the Glacial Age closed in the north of Europe about thirty- 



184 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

five hundred years ago ; archaeologists say six or seven thousand 
years ago. 

Prof. Capellini recently submitted some proofs looking to the ex- 
istence of " pliocene" man, which Prof. Dawkins has overthrown, the 
latter maintaining that no traces of man appear until the " suc- 
ceeding stage, or the pleistocene." Other geologists agree with Prof. 
Dawkins, but use the word " quaternary" instead of pleistocene. The 
significant fact in this connection is that "living species of mamma- 
lia" begin to abound in the "pleistocene," and the cereals first dis- 
play themselves in the ' ' quaternary ;" that is, in the period or stratum 
denominated pleistocene or quaternary. When man's first appearance 
is detected, the cereals and living mammalia also make their first ap- 
pearance. Equally serviceable is the conclusion of Prof. Blake that 
no flint implements have been found in England that bear evidence 
of an antiquity earlier than the Post-glacial period. Prof. Winchell 
bravely but inconclusively argues for man's origin in the middle Ter- 
tiary period ; and Prof. Geikie, from a single bone, not known to be 
human even, claims it as "direct proof that man lived prior to the 
last inter-glacial period ! " 

Principal Dawson, whose scholarship needs no defense, exhibits 
the proof of man's post-glacial origin, and assigns him a history of six 
or seven thousand years. In an address delivered before the Amer- 
ican Association for the Advancement of Science, of which he was 
the president, he said : ' ' Since the comparatively short post-glacial 
and recent periods apparently include the whole of human his- 
tory, we are but new-comers on the earth, and therefore have had 
little opportunity to solve the great problems which it presents to 
us." He further and promptly intimates that " the cessation of gla- 
cial cold and settlement of our continents at their present levels are 
events which may have occurred not more than 6,000 or 7,000 
years ago." 

Thus science, running wild for a time, and extending its hallucina- 
tions to every hint, or fact, or skull, or ax, is at last swinging to the 
support of the theory of a limited history of man, as interpreted by the 
Bible defenders. All along the latter have been unaccountably dis- 
turbed over the radical scientific variations from the traditional standard, 
which has been vindicated rather than overthrown. The caverns, in- 
deed, throw up no proofs against the old faith ; the seas, dredged and 
sounded, speak not against the accepted account ; not one skull or a 
hundred, not one implement or a thousand, invalidates the theory of 
a short antiquity. If finally, abandoning its pretentious inferences 
from a few skulls, and the contents of geological strata, science should 
settle down to the acceptance of the validity of the orthodox an- 



PROOFS OF A SHORT ANTIQUITY. 185 

tiquity, then indeed human history might finally be compassed, and its 
unwritten chapters be deciphered, but the thought of a remote an- 
tiquity fills history with vagueness ; it blots out history. 

With the geological evidence thus interpreted, the historical and 
monumental records of men are in perfect harmony. Grote has 
shown that the first Greek Olympiad dates seven hundred and sev- 
enty-six years before Christ, and Sir Charles Lyell admits that Koman 
and Egyptian monuments carry us back no farther than fifteen hun- 
dred years before Christ. Hindu history is mythical back of thirty- 
six hundred years ago. 

The proof from the lake dwellings in Switzerland, so often referred 
to by geologists as pointing to the Neolithic Age, is utterly over- 
thrown by the fact that pile villages, as primitive as those of the early 
Swiss, are still established on many Oriental coasts, the people build- 
ing them being in an advanced stage of civilization. 

History, monuments, and geology agree with the Biblical interpreta- 
tion of a short antiquity, the overthrow of which belongs to those who, 
infatuated with the superstitious idea that man sprang from animals, 
are determined to have a long enough period to bring it about. Prof. 
Dawson frankly admits that the value of a long antiquity is its bear- 
ing on evolution, while a short antiquity is in the interest of human 
history, as known. The drift of science at this time, however, is 
toward the Biblical interpretation. 

In connection with the origin and antiquity of man, scientifically 
considered, other questions might be brought forward, such as the 
plurality of races, the different departments of ethnography, and the 
common bond of humanity, or the unity of mankind. Prof. Winchell, 
with a scientific boldness peculiar to the times, is disseminating the 
theory of a pre-Adamite race, in order to vindicate the early geolog- 
ical supposition of a fabulous antiquity. At this stage of the discussion 
it is not important whether or not there was a race of pre-Adamites, 
only so far as it tends to invalidate the Mosaic record, and give coun- 
tenance to the evolution theories of the materialists. 

A race of pre-Adamites may have consisted of beings half animals 
and half men, or centaurs, who through evolution finally produced 
Adam, with which the Bible concerns itself. But this is as unscien- 
tific as it is unscriptural, and in no way disposes of any existing diffi- 
culty or throws light upon any ethnic problem. A pre-Adamite was 
a man or he was not. If not, he is outside of our inquiry ; if he was, 
the same questions arise to perplex the ethnologist, as Adam himself 
suggests. Besides, if the last scientific word on anthropology should 
favor a short antiquity of man, confirming the Mosaic revelation, the 
pre-Adamite would disappear quite as suddenly as he has appeared. 



186 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Touching the plurality of races, some inquiry is pertinent at this 
time, inasmuch as it is in conflict with the doctrine of the unity of the 
race, or its foundation in a single pair. The origin of the races, as a 
scientific problem, is as perplexing as the origin of man himself. 
Whether he has a monogenetic pedigree or a polygenetic history, eth- 
nology is making debatable. For it has been demonstrated that 
climate, food, and temporal conditions alone are not adequate causes 
of the ethnic lines of separation, and, to involve the matter in increas- 
ing mystery, outside of these physical causes others have not been 
enumerated. The student is in a painful dilemma, for he can pro- 
ceed no farther until the door to another explanation is opened. 
What is also most singular is that, as in the animal kingdom the 
race-types — that is, the species — are fixed, so in human history the 
race-types have not changed, and give no sign of change. The race- 
types of the one can not be the product of development any more 
than the species-types of the other are the product of development. 

The fixity of race- types is not at all inconsistent with the varieties 
of individuals, or the unity of the races, for the law of fixity admits 
of innumerable extensions and modifications, without compromising 
its character or influence. The diversity of the races is a fact no one 
will deny ; but this should be expected, as, whether outside influences 
are sufficient or not to modify man, he is sufficient to modify him- 
self, which he has done. With variations occurring constantly in the 
race, it must not be forgotten that they are no greater than the vari- 
ations in animals having a common origin, and so the fact makes not 
against unity. 

Physiologists concede that the structure of the skin of the negro 
and the white man is the same, and the brains and the nerves of the 
lowest races do not differ structurally from those of the highest. The 
languages of the races, under thorough analysis, exhibit in their roots 
a similarity that is suggestive of a common origin. The Aryan, the 
Semitic, and the Allophylian group of tongues, with all their varia- 
tions, point to a ''primitive identity;" and the same intellectual 
aspirations actuate all alike. Even the same moral problems are dis- 
cussed with more or less intensity by all. With marked diversities 
there is a wonderful unity among the races, a physical, moral, and 
intellectual unity. The several race-types prove to be compatible with 
one race idea, a very satisfactory ethnic conclusion, which, however, 
is not favorable to " descent" or evolution, since the latter must have 
changeable types and a disunion of races in order to illustrate its 
meaning and maintain its position. The unity of the race, as a fact 
of anthropology, is more than a thorn in the theory of evolution ; it 
is the death-knell of materialism. 



THE DESTINY OF THE RACE. 187 

Perhaps no phase of anthropology is more captivating than the 
future of man or the destiny of the race, a subject that follows in the 
wake of the former discussions, and is really as philosophical as it is 
religious. What is the philosophic prospectus of man's future ? It 
will be agreed that pessimism — a form of philosophic hypochondria — 
is without inspiration ; it dims the eye as one looks forward, and fills 
it with tears. The fear of J. S. Mill that man may reach the limit 
of knowledge or achievement in music, is not productive of energy in 
musical pursuits. The belief of Schopenhauer that the government 
of the world is as bad as it possibly can be, with no assurance of 
change, strips life of all eagerness, and paralyzes human effort for 
progress. The denial of freedom to man, as made by Hackel — that 
is, that he is a part of the autonomy of nature, subservient to its 
conditions, and that development and responsibility are idle words — is 
a discouraging aspect of life, the correction of which is both a duty 
and a necessity. 

Has philosophy nothing more to offer than a series of discourage- 
ments ? Is there any philosophic hope of the race ? The general 
theory of development is an inspiration in itself, but that it has not 
inspired man is proof that it is wanting in a vital element, or, if not 
thus deficient, that it is self-hindering or self-destructive, by virtue 
of other elements, or associations and relations. 

The weakness of the doctrine of development is its prostitution . to 
the service of materialism. Make it a Christian doctrine — that is, 
turn it to the service of humanity — and the stars in their courses will 
fight for it. It has been suspected more than once that the philo- 
sophic interpretation of the doctrine implied the retardation of the 
race; hence it lost its glow. If " development" means only the im- 
provement of man as an animal, there is no inspiration in it ; but if 
it means the progress of man towards his Maker, the supremacy of 
the spiritual over the animalic, the world will shout in its favor. 
Deny freedom, banish the idea of moral responsibility, suppress the 
personality of man, reduce thought to nervous action, and conscience 
to a social impulse, and the future of man loses its attraction as a 
subject of contemplation. 

If the interpretation of some evolutionists be considered, the 
"development" theory signifies too much, more than we can ask, 
for, carried to its logical conclusion, the theory promises, not the 
future development of man, but his disappearance from the earth, 
being succeeded by a still higher organized being, as superior to man 
as man is superior to the gorilla, but retaining traceable signs of re- 
lationship to man. This goes too far, as the other interpretation goes 
not far enough. Unless development stops with man, centering itself 



188 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

in his upbuilding, he must become a fossil in the future ; and such a 
fate philosophers have assumed as possible, and really ventured to 
predict its probable fulfillment. Thus the "development" theory is 
dangerous, however applied, resulting, on the one hand, in the 
dwarfishness and degradation of man, or, on the other, in his extinc- 
tion, either view being repugnant to that Christian hope of the race 
which involves an increase in knowledge and the gradual moral ele- 
vation of all mankind. 

The hypothesis of Christianity, which involves the development of 
man in the image of God, the enlargement of his moral and intellec- 
tual possibilities until he is a hundred-fold greater than he now is, has 
in it a propelling influence that makes progress both a delight and a cer- 
tainty. Hackel, dispensing entirely with Christianity as an uplifting 
force, foreshadows a future for man on the lower basis of mechanical 
development ; but in dispensing with religion, or that form of it which 
Gustave Jaeger pronounced the "best weapon" in the struggle of 
human life, he disqualifies man for the largest and truest development. 
Humanity can not be run on steam-eugine principles, or played like 
an iEolian harp. Precisely this is the religion of materialism, the 
religion of mechanics or mechanical development. Man is the product 
of environing forces, and will be developed by them. 

In our conception of the future man, we are not loaded with phil- 
osophic dead-weights, or embarrassed by clouds of pessimistic dark- 
ness. The development we foresee is along the line of the higher 
nature, resulting in the suppression of the animalic spirit and an ex- 
tinction of those signs of relationship to the animal world that Mr. 
Darwin was very successful in pointing out. The social nature, the 
intellectual faculties, the moral powers, we see blooming in the radi- 
ance of a light that shines from above ; they are developed, not by 
mechanical processes, but, in spite of enviroument, in spite of physical 
economies, by the aid of religious influences, always the most potent 
and the most effective in the intellectual and moral regeneration of 
man. The ideal man is not the mechanically developed, but the re- 
ligiously developed, man, for the reason that mechanical forces are 
the lowest, and religious forces the highest. Nor, on the hypothesis 
of Christianity, is there any reason to suspect that the race is march- 
ing on to extinction, to be succeeded by another race still more highly 
organized and endowed. The higher race is sure to come, but it will 
be human ; it will be our race "perfected along the religious line. In this 
there is inspiration ; along this avenue of hope we walk. 

Even a careless reader can see how closely related to the question 
of the eternal life of man are these philosophic conjectures, on which 
alone immortality can not be predicated. " If a man die, shall he live 



ASSUMPTIONS OF SCIENCE. 189 

again ?" is quite as philosophic as religious, but philosophy is uncertain 
in its answer. Emerson, reaching into highest things, rests faith in 
immortality chiefly in the desire for it, a beautiful but rather provok- 
ing kind of transcendentalism, for it is wanting in persuasive suffi- 
ciency. The doctrine of immortality is a stumbling-block to material- 
ism. No mechanical or evolutionary theory that attributes instincts, 
emotions, aspirations, faculties, moral powers, to natural processes, 
will readily affiliate with a system that allows immortality to man. 
The argument that makes out man's immortality will also make out 
the immortality of the animal kingdom, according to the mechan- 
ician; we regret that Prof. Agassiz conceded this much to those who 
differed with him. 

Thus we see what robbery materialism has made of one of man's 
cherished hopes ! It has struck at his nobility, allied him to animals, 
threatened him with future extinction, and quenched the fires of 
immortality. 

Ours is quite another faith, which, turning the laws of develop- 
ment into another channel, foresees another future for man, and 
intrenches itself in the truth-girdled teachings of Christianity. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

MIND AN INTEGER. 



BY insisting on certain limitations to human inquiry, and the 
proofs of traditional dogmas, modern science has permanently 
checked the spirit of assumption which more or less characterized the 
psychology, and especially the theology, of the past. It refuses to 
believe on the ground of authority alone; it demands evidence of 
every proposition, and virtually suspends its faith even in axiomatic 
or primary truths until they have been demonstrated. An axiom can 
not defend itself behind the assertion that it is incapable of demon- 
stration, or by the bolder announcement that its truth is self-evident. 
Convicted of granite stubbornness in its position, science nevertheless 
maintains opposition to so-called self-evident and necessary truths, 
requiring their logical exposition, and asking at least for a show of 
syllogistic sympathy in their framework and functions. 

Defensible to a degree as is this position, it is indefensible just so 
far as it overlooks the distinction between assumption and conclusion, 
the former being the latter without evidence, the latter being the 
former with evidence. Pure assumption is unevidenced conclusion ; 



190 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

pure conclusion is evidenced assumption. Of the former, superstition 
is an example ; of the latter, axioms, primary truths, established de- 
ductions, rational results, or the results of rational processes, are 
sufficient examples. 

In the study of mind, a subject by no means transparent, we must 
be on our guard against the influence of old theories, and those pre- 
possessions which have been handed down from generation to genera- 
tion ; but at the same time the conclusions of history must be ac- 
cepted at their full value. One of these, and lying at the foundation 
of this discussion, is the fact of mind itself, which, until philosophy 
raised its inquiring hand, was accepted without dispute or hesitancy. 
At the very threshold of the inquiry, the fact of the mind's existence 
as a separate and independent entity, and entitled to recognition as a 
ffima facie force, must be established. Hitherto accepted without 
controversy, science designates the traditional and popular belief in 
its independent existence as an assumption, requiring its demonstra- 
tion just as it requires the demonstration of the existence of God. 
We are forbidden to assume the existence of mind; it must be 
proven. Prof. Ferriersays: "Matter is already in the field as an 
acknowledged entity — this both parties admit. Mind, considered as 
an independent entity, is not so unmistakably in the field. Therefore, 
as entities are not to be multiplied without necessity, we are not en- 
titled to postulate a new cause, so long as it is possible to account for 
the phenomena by a cause already in existence ; which possibility has 
never yet been disproved." In another form, Alexander Bain at- 
tempts to demolish the doctrine of the two substances, mind and 
matter, asserting that the so-called differences between them can not 
be longer maintained. Even Dugald Stewart raised the suspicious ques- 
tion, whether consciousness adequately testifies to the existence of mind, 
thus aiding the empirical psychologists in their work of destruction. 
He says: "We are conscious of sensation, thought, desire, volition, 
but we are not conscious of the existence of mind itself." The sensa- 
tionalism of Locke is here reproduced, or its effect on the philosophy 
of Stewart is manifest. The untenableness of the position of Stewart 
is in allowing consciousness of thought, but denying consciousness of 
the thinking power, faculty, or sense. A consciousness of an act of 
memory is a consciousness of memory ; at least the separation between 
them can not be drawn. To be conscious of one and not of the other 
is impossible. To be conscious of the mind's activity and of its results 
implies a consciousness of mind ; not a consciousness of the nature of 
mind, but of the fact of mind. Thought is proof of mind, as sight 
is proof of the eye. The fact of mind is therefore a conclusion, and 
not an assumption. 



AD UMBRA TIONS OF MIND, 191 

What is the mind? To this question, so easily asked, a confusion 
of answers has been returned, each in itself an exploring line of 
thought, each a contribution to the solution of the philosopher's 
enigma. Prof. Bain observes that, "the drawing of too sharp a line 
between sense and intelligence has been the fruitful source of confu- 
sions in philosophy," but it might also be remarked that the attempted 
blending of sense and intelligence has been the fruitful source, not 
only of confusion, but also of error and despair, in philosophy. The 
sharper the line between the two, like the channel between England 
and France, the clearer the characteristics and possessions of each. 
To undertake to convert the figure two into one, Mr. Bain assumes, 
is the duty of philosophy ; to others, it seems like a destruction both 
of philosophy and religion. 

The task of analyzing the mind is not so easy as the task of dis- 
secting the body. Mind is invisible, eluding physical grasping and 
physical analysis. Veiled and unseen, however, it shines as did Moses' 
face through the veil, illuminating the tabernacle of flesh and pro- 
claiming somewhat of its hidden nature. Manifestation of mind is a 
proclamation of mind, and in sympathetic hands it is a key to its 
nature. Oxygen is invisible, but it will burn, the lungs will inhale 
it, and both its existence and character are demonstrated. In the 
activities and results of mental operations, there are the adumbrations 
of the character of mind. 

Is it possible to contemplate, the mind, apart from its physical 
associations and connections ? Can it be insulated, studied as an in- 
dependent entity? Philo, the Jew, remarked that the mind is like 
the eye, which, seeing other objects, can not see itself; and Prof. 
Draper concludes that it can not judge of itself. Prof. Bain dis- 
courages self-study by remarking that, "we are not allowed to per- 
ceive a mind acting kpart from its material companion;" and again, 
he says, "in removing the body we remove our indicator of the 
mind, namely, the bodily manifestations, as if in testing for magnet- 
ism we should set aside the needle and other tokens of its presence." 
Here he broaches the doctrine of the identity of mental manifestations 
and physical states, an instance of the petitio principii not infrequent 
in his writings. His illustration is not exactly pertinent. Magnetism 
may be contemplated without the needle, and color may be studied 
independently of objects ; that is to say, even physical properties may 
be insulated from physical objects and studied apart. If so, much 
more may the mind be made an exclusive subject of investigation. As 
the Nilometer marks the rise and fall of the Nile, so the body, to a 
degree, may denote the activities of the intellect; beyond a certain 
stage of interaction, the mind disengages itself from bodily control or 



192 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

interference, is set free like oxygen from water, or chlorine from salt> 
and stands out an insulated fact, a spiritual entity. Plato insisted 
that the eye, by means of a mirror, can see itself, and taught that 
the soul, as if abstracted from the body, can shut itself up within 
its own limits and think only of itself. 

The habit of studying the mind in its relations with the body, and 
determining its limitations by the law of interaction, has led the psy- 
chologists into the error of believing that the mind, separate from the 
body, can not be rationally expounded, and that a knowledge of it 
as an independent substance is impossible. If the body can be studied 
as an independent instrument, and physiology be interpreted as the 
science of the instrument, the mind can be studied as an independent 
agency, and psychology be interpreted as the science of such agency. 
The blending of the two, or the creation of a physiological psychol- 
ogy, is the attempt of such thinkers as Ferrier, Bain, Spencer, and 
others ; but it is irrational, confusing things that are essentially inde- 
pendent. The connection of body and mind is an indisputable fact, 
but the identity of the connected parts remains to be established ; it 
must not be assumed. Bain, speaking of the connection, pronounces 
it "an unaccountable, because an ultimate, fact," but it is unaccount- 
able, as it seems to us, because of the dissimilarity of the two sub- 
stances, and hence the expression of the union in language is a 
" puzzle." The union of oxygen and hydrogen in water is expressi- 
ble, because they are similar substances ; the union of mind and mat- 
ter is not expressible, because they are not similar substances. The 
great difference forever forbids expression, and proves independence. 

Kecognizing the mind as an independent substance, it is our pur- 
pose now carefully to consider the different interpretations put upon 
it by the speculating philosophy of modern times, since it is the 
ruling philosophy of to-day. At least eight interpretations, each rep- 
resented by a distinguished name, must be considered, if we do justice 
to the scientific and philosophic attempts at the solution of mind. 
Let Locke, Leibnitz, Hegel, Reid, Hobbes, Mill, Spencer, and Bain 
represent the manifold interpretations, to which others might, indeed, 
be added, but without additional gain. In a general sense, these in- 
terpretations may be characterized as sensational, idealistic, and material- 
istic, showing the fluctuations of philosophic thought and the instabil- 
ity of its conclusions. 

To Locke's interpretation we so frequently allude that it is 
unnecessary to reproduce it in this connection in detail. It is suffi- 
cient to remind the reader that, having projected the theory of sensa- 
tion as the source of knowledge, Locke deprived the mind of all 
nascent ideas, or intuitional knowledge, leaving it a perfect blank, a 



LOCKE'S INTERPRETATION OF MIND. 193 

capacious but unfilled reservoir, into which truths might be poured. 
His theory of knowledge defined his interpretation of mind. Later 
sensationalists have not agreed with Locke as to the necessity of a 
complete expurgation of original ideas from the mind, in order to 
sustain empirical psychology, since sensation may be as necessary, to 
a certain extent, to a mind stored with ideas as to one empty. In 
the one case, it opens the well-stored mind ; in the other, it fills it. 
Sensationalism does not, therefore, require a vacant mind. 

The inner deficiencies of Locke's interpretation are all but appar- 
ent. It is destructive of the intuitional sense or the intellectual con- 
tents of the consciousness. Locke attempts an explanation of those 
constitutional ideas and primary truths usually attributed to man by 
referring their origin to the teachings of the nursery, the instructions 
of parents, and social education in general. An investigator tracing 
inborn ideas to servants and grandmothers ! This theory assumes 
that servants and grandmothers teach constitutional ideas, when, if 
any thing is certain, it is that such ideas do not result from teaching, 
but precede it, and that children are taught nearly every thing else 
but constitutional ideas. Intuitional ideas spring up in us like foun- 
tains in Athens ; they can not be explained from the nursery. Locke 
compels the mind to begin its housekeeping without any furniture, or 
begs it seek the aid of hired servants. In itself it is destitute, power- 
less, helpless. 

The interpretation does not provide for intellectual expansion. 
Such a mind as Locke describes is receptive, not creative. An in- 
finitely receptive mind is not necessarily a growing, expansive mind ; 
its materials multiply, but itself does not enlarge; its capacity may 
be filled, but the mind itself remains unchanged. 

Moreover, Locke's interpretation is contradicted by consciousness ; 
that is, by the mind itself. No man is conscious of being born with 
a blank mind any more than with blind eyes. Blankness is idiocy, 
as the closed eye is blindness. In the earliest stages of conscious ex- 
istence the mind exerts a self-determining power, which grows with 
the life of the individual, and establishes itself as an inherent and 
original function, underived from sensational experience, and often 
commanding and generating experience. 

The ethical tendency of the interpretation is toward materialism, 
which is its most unfortunate aspect. The doctrines of immortality, 
human responsibility, regeneration, and the highest religious truths 
were involved in the determinations of Locke, who, discovering the 
natural significance of his interpretation, attempted to modify it, 
but in vain. 

The interpretation of Leibnitz is the theory of an idealistic 

13 



194 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

philosopher, and an advance over that of the empiricist. In the gen- 
eral he held that the mind is a mirror of the universe, reflecting all 
things, and containing the types, forms, and ideas of universal exist- 
ence. Locke held that the mind receives the images or impressions 
of things, is an image-bearer, a reflector ; Leibnitz assumed that the 
mind threw back, like a mirror, universal truths as its original con- 
tents, and also germinated ideas and the forms of truth. The differ- 
ence between the two philosophies is radical. Locke's image-bearer 
was originally empty ; Leibnitz's mirror is full. Locke's reflector re- 
flected what was cast upon it; Leibnitz's reflected its own depths. 
One is an external mirror ; the other internal. 

Contrary to Locke's, the idealistic interpretation recognizes the in- 
tuitional character of mind, assigning to it universal ideas, and pro- 
claiming the independence of mind from sensation and experience. This 
extreme view is objectionable, but as a reaction from the experience 
philosophy, it has some justification. 

The interpretation is also a reaction from the pantheistic doctrine 
of Spinoza, who reduced all things, including mind, to one substance, 
which compromised immortality and the divine existence. Leibnitz, 
therefore, introduced the doctrine of the monads into his system of 
thought, designating each monad as a world in itself, or a soul, thus 
going as far in one direction as Spinoza had in the other. Spinoza 
shouts one universe, one substance ; Leibnitz shouts myriads of worlds, 
myriads of substances. Spinoza unified all things in a logical pan- 
theism ; Leibnitz separated them in the difference of substance, and 
redeemed the divine existence. Spinozism was intensely centripetal ; 
Leibnitzism intensely centrifugal. In so far as it was an attempt to 
turn back the tide of pantheism, idealism must be approved ; but the 
monadic doctrine is as unwarrantable as pantheism itself, for it tends 
to undermine the great fact of unity observable in the universe, and 
which unmistakably points to one Father, the Creator of all things. 

The ethical character of monadism is in harmony with orthodox 
teachings respecting immortality and responsibility ; it acknowledges 
the individuality of mind, and insists upon individual righteousness as 
the condition of happiness. 

The theory of Leibnitz is unsatisfactory, in that it does not define 
the mind, or even clearly denote its functions. The idea that the 
mind is a mirror in any sense or of any thing is inconsistent with its 
nature. It is not a reflector — that is, throwing back what it receives 
or what it contains — but a reflector in the sense of thinking, which 
implies an active, creative process ; it is not a mirror, but a meditator ; 
not a thrower back of ideas, but an originator of ideas ; not a pano- 
rama of existing thoughts, but a creator of thought. Proclus, a Neo- 



HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. 195 

platonist, asserted that a knowledge of the mind is a knowledge of 
the whole universe ; that is, the knowledge of the universe is in some 
way reflected upon human consciousness through the mind. This 
extreme Leibnitz seems to have absorbed, for it is his inter- 
pretation in a statelier form. The mind is something more than 
a passive substance, something more than a recipient of thought ; it 
is not a sponge. 

The philosophy of Hegel introduces a new idealistic interpretation 
of mind. Quenching the empirical spirit at its birth, he rose to the 
contemplation of the highest truth, and attempted to restore it to its 
rightful authority and influence. Transcendental in his conceptions, 
bordering even on mysticism, it is not always easy to extract his 
meaning from the encumbered language he employs to represent his 
ideas. The light does not shine through him as it does through a 
diamond. He is penetrative and suggestive, however, to those who 
plunge into his obscurities. 

In discoursing upon the philosophy of mind he divides it into 
three classes : 1. The subjective mind ; 2. The objective mind ; 3. The 
absolute mind, — a classification intended to include all departments of 
the mind's activities and relations. The "subjective" mind is the in- 
ternal mind, the rational, thinking power, the intelligent ego, that 
which contitutes personality, identity. This mind Hegel regards as 
enslaved, subject to sloth and passion, and that it must experience 
emancipation before it can be what it was intended to be. In union 
with nature the mind is individual ; when free from nature it is con- 
sciousness or ego. In its individual state mind is a theoretical fact, 
probably what Aristotle calls " potential ;" it is intelligence but un- 
developed ; in the ego state it is practical, developed, represented by 
the will — it has become " actual," as Aristotle would say. When it 
has passed from the individual state — a state of nature — to con- 
sciousness or will-power — a state of supremacy — it has realized 
emancipation. 

Passing to the "objective" mind, it has respect to the person, but 
not to personality ; that is, it regards the rights, the ethics, the con- 
duct, of the person. The subjective mind relates to personality, 
thought, spirituality ; the objective mind to personal rights, conduct, 
government, social conditions. The subjective mind is represented 
by the philosopher, theologian, metaphysician, poet, thinker ; the ob- 
jective mind by the statesman, ruler, legislator. 

The "absolute" mind, abandoning an objective form, becomes 
ideally subjective, expressing itself in art, religion, and philosophy. The 
highest mind is not subjective, that is, personal, or objective, that is, 
ethical and governmental, but absolute, that is, aesthetic, philosophical, 



1 
196 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

religious. Religion is the expression of the "absolute" as government 
is the expression of the "objective," and consciousness the expression 
of the "subjective" mind. 

This three-fold conception of mind, as framed by Hegel, is not 
without its merits. In the acknowledgment of the enslavement of 
the subjective mind or will-power, he is in harmony with the writers of 
the Scriptures, who affirm the debasement of the mental constitution. 
Upon the objective mind he imposes the duty of erecting States, de- 
vising ethical and governmental systems, and of providing for the 
protection of property, the peace and order of society, and the sanc- 
tity and perpetuity of the family institution. More than all, he 
emphasized the relation of religion to the individual, styling the re- 
ligious mind as the highest type of conscious intelligence, and vindi- 
cated its universal necessity. 

Hegel's interpretation, suggestive as we have allowed, is not 
altogether satisfactory, for it fails at a vital point. He classifies 
mind with reference to its activities, or manifestations in conscious- 
ness, society, and religion ; but these are the results of mind, indic- 
ative of the nature of mind, we admit, but an a posteriori method of 
getting at the mind itself. Indeed, Hegel stops with the functions 
of mind, and leaves the problem of mind unsolved. To say that -a 
.knife will cut is not a definition of knife. The only approach to a 
definition that Hegel makes is that mind involves intelligence and 
will ; but it is unsafe to admit the word intelligence into the defini- 
tion. Mind and intelligence are not identical ; mind is power, 
intelligence is result. No less vulnerable is the statement that the 
mind is the will in its practical form, since that is defining the whole 
by a part. The will is a department of mind, and to identify it with 
the mind is like identifying the War Department with the United 
States Government. 

The classification of Hegel, comprehensive as it appears, is incom- 
plete. Imagination and memory, quite as much as the will, are 
powers of the mind ; but they, as well as the intuitions, are omitted, 
or merged into the general contents of consciousness. 

The three minds of Hegel, or the three phases of mind, are 
alike enslaved, requiring emancipation; but Hegel limits enslave- 
ment to the subjective mind. In its governmental products, in its 
ethical systems, in its domestic institutions and regulations, the 
objective mind betrays imperfection and unfitness for great achieve- 
ments. Despotisms, oligarchies, monarchies, are the creations of the 
objective mind, proving its corruption, cruelty, and instability. In 
the spirit of caste, the artificial distinctions of society, and race- 
prejudices, we see again the incapacity of the objective mind for its 



THE INTERPRETATION OF REID. 197 

tasks. In the enslavement of races, in the feudal system, in intoler- 
ance, persecution, and barbarism, we discover the objective mind in 
positive debasement. Emancipation is its necessity. 

The absolute mind drags a chain. Look at the religions of the 
world; heathenish, abominable all, save the One, high over all. 
Hegel admits that the Oriental religions but crudely represent the 
absolute mind ; the Judaic religion is an improvement ; Christianity 
is its best exponent. Christianity, however, is not a product of the 
human mind ; it is the religion of Revelation ; pagan religions are 
man-made, the products of the absolute mind of man. It needs, 
therefore, purification, yea, emancipation from superstition, idolatry, 
mysticism, and ignorance. The three minds are in chains, the en- 
slavement of one is the enslavement of all. Necessity is upon us, 
therefore, to pass on in our search for a true theory or concep- 
tion of mind. 

The interpretation of Reid we next submit for examination. 
Reid prides himself on taking a common-sense view of things, even 
of mysteries, which if they can not be solved he justifies as 
mysteries; but we must beware a little of the "common-sense" phi- 
losophy of this Scotch thinker, for this term is sometimes used as a 
cover for inexcusable ignorance, an obstacle to further investigation. 
The common, that is, the ordinary, sense of mankind might brand 
with folly the attempt to ferret out the hidden facts, to solve the in- 
soluble secrets of the universe ; and unfortunately Reid sometimes 
shackles and paralyzes investigation by the employment of this 
prejudice. The dictum of modern philosophy that God, mind, and 
matter are unknowable, Reid accepts so far as it relates to mind, 
agreeing with Hume that the substantive nature of mind is beyond 
knowledge and insists that common sense requires the acceptance 
of this conclusion. In like manner he maintains that perception 
and reflection, as states, are knowable and analyzable, but perceived 
objects and the perceiving mind are unknowable ; in other words, 
he draws the limitations of knowledge around perception and re- 
flection. 

Affirming that the mind is unknowable, Reid nevertheless assures 
us that it is a perceiving and reflecting somewhat ; that it observes, 
discriminates, discovers, for this is the idea of perception ; that it 
combines, judges, compares, analyzes, for this is the total of reflection. 
Whatever may be said of this finally, Reid has rendered service to 
philosophy in the assignment of these two functions — perceiving and 
reflecting, to mind ; for, while they are the terms of Locke, he meant 
more than Locke, because he was more than an empiricist. The 
original mind, according to Reid, was not empty ; and if we compre- 



198 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

hend not its nature, we apprehend its faculties or functions. The 
theory, however, abounds in antinomies, and is as unsatisfactory as 
Hegel's, and that of Leibnitz. Insisting that the mind is unknow- 
able, he declares investigation of its nature useless, and so paralyzes 
intelligent endeavor, relieves mental aspiration of purpose, and directs 
meditation merely to the results of mental activity, without solving 
activity itself. Without asserting that the mind may know itself, we 
are strong in the conviction that Keid has not declared all that is 
possible to be known of mind. If it can not be fully known, we 
may know more of it than that it has certain functions. Moreover, 
he is contradictory in the statement that mind is unknowable, for he 
makes mind somewhat known to us through its functions. One 
knows in part what paper is when told that it is made of rags ; one 
knows something of mind when told that it perceives and reflects. 
Like Hamilton and Spencer, Reid is guilty of philosophic inconsist- 
ency. Hamilton declared the Absolute unknowable, but spoke of it 
as the Infinite. If the mind is unknowable, one can not know any 
thing of it ; one can not be certain that there is such a thing as 
mind ; but Reid affirms its existence, and attributes to it two high 
prerogatives, proving knowledge of it. Evidently then, he was look- 
ing in the right direction, but stopped when he ought to have pro- 
ceeded. He limited his observation when the field of vision began to 
extend. This is the common fault of philosophic investigation, es- 
pecially of modern inquiry, as we shall often see. 

Of the historic interpretations of mind, the materialistic is perhaps 
the most imposing, as it is the most daring and destructive. Hobbes, 
who was neither a sensationalist, like Locke, nor an idealist in any 
sense, represents elementary materialism in the department of meta- 
physics. Having studied Francis Bacon and Descartes, he departed 
sufficiently from both to justify his claim as an original thinker, and 
original thought, even though erroneous, is apt to command atten- 
tion. Hobbes had a mathematical mind, which prepared him to deal 
with the sophistries of speculation, and enabled him to construct a 
philosophy of his own. Prof. Morris contends that the poetical 
mind sustains a vital relation to the philosophical, is propaedeutic in 
its influence, since he finds in Shakespeare traces of philosophical 
genius. Plato extolled geometry as the preparatory gateway to philo- 
sophical study; and Galen, the ancient physician, declared that 
geometry saved him from Pyrrhonism. Roger Bacon pronounced 
mathematics the "alphabet of philosophy." In Plato we discover the 
poetical as well as the mathematical ; in Shakespeare the poetical 
only ; in Galen and Bacon the mathematical ; so that it would appear 
that mathematical studies, rather than poetical, prepare the mind for 



MATERIALISM OF HOBBES. 199 

the grasping of those sturdy and abstruse problems which metaphysics 
ever thrusts before us. 

Hobbes was not poetical ; he was mathematical ; this is the key to 
his character, and the opening vein to his philosophy. As he ad- 
vanced in mathematical knowledge, he was led to believe that reason- 
ing is a mathematical calculation, an example in arithmetic. With 
this explanation, he assumed that man is "a calculating, computing, 
ratiocinative machine," the mind is an arithmetic in itself. This is 
Hobbes's first interpretation of mind, as dangerous as it is plausible. 

What his second view is may be arrived at in a similar manner. 
The physical sciences exerted a peculiar fascination over him ; he 
studied every thing from their stand-point, mind no less than matter; 
and in the progress of his studies he reached the conclusion that 
physical phenomena are merely modes of motion; but he did not stop 
with this announcement. Like a philosopher who wishes to extend 
law to the widest bounds, he soon began to assert that mental phe- 
nomena were likewise modes of motion ; that is, that life is the 
" mechanical play of sensation and passion." Here are two views of 
mind, the second supplemental of the first. The first is, that the 
mind acts, thinks, reasons, mathematically; the second is, that the mind 
acts, thinks, reasons, mechanically; and, combining them, the whole 
view is that the mathematical mind is mechanical in its operations. 

That Hobbes was influenced by Pythagoras can not be doubted, 
for the ancient mathematical philosopher held that "the world is 
a living arithmetic in its development, a realized geometry in its re- 
pose;" and all Pythagoreans, including Plato himself, conceived that 
the universe was built according to mathematical principles, repre- 
sented by the generic word number. A mathematical conception of 
the universe was not, therefore, original with Hobbes, notwithstand- 
ing his claim to originality. The application of the mathematical, or 
rather, the mechanical, principle to mind, was a daring attempt, and 
introduced into philosophic speculation the materialistic tendency. 
Schwegler tells us that Hegel aimed to prove that the world is ex- 
ternally what the mind is internally, while Spencer asserts that the 
mind is internally what the world is externally. Either view is a 
participation in the mechanical principle of Hobbes, derived in part 
from the Pythagorean conception of the universe. 

Without controverting the mechanical principle, does it throw 
light upon the nature of mind? Hobbes regards the mind as a 
reasoning power; it calculates, computes; its chief office is to reason. 
No one will dispute the verity of this discovery, or attempt a reduc- 
tion of its value. Incidentally, too, Hobbes demonstrates not only 
the value of mathematical studies, but their relation to the develop- 



200 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ment of the mind — a hint to educators that ought not to be over- 
looked. 

Lifting" the veil a little, however, the interpretation is seen to be 
radically defective and ethically dangerous. It involves a too precise 
and limited view of man. He is more than a reasoner. To think is 
the noblest characteristic of man ; to think correctly the badge of his 
greatness ; yet he is more than a rational, ratiocinative, calculating 
animal — he is a loving, sympathetic, charitable, emotional being, 
having a moral as well as an intellectual nature. To discard the 
spiritual element and exalt the intellectual at the expense of every 
thing else, is to degrade man in the very attempt to ennoble him. 
Man is complete only in the relative development of the spiritual, 
intellectual, and physical qualities and functions of his being. 
Hobbes overlooks the difference between spiritual and. intellectual, 
reducing the activity of man to a mechanical rationalism. Good 
grounds also exist for doubting that mental phenomena are modes of 
motion. Whether physical phenomena are modes of motion we shall 
not now discuss ; but when Hobbes undertakes to explain the opera- 
tions of mind by analogous operations in the physical world, we are 
at liberty to question the attempt, and ask for the proof of the con- 
clusions. Mental action, that is, the ferment of mind in the process 
of thought, may partake of the character of motion ; but if so, it is 
motion, sui generis, without counterpart or even resemblance in nature. 
Poetically speaking, the rush of thought may be likened to the flow 
of ocean waves; philosophically speaking, it would be incorrect to 
apply the laws of one to the other. Fancied resemblance must not 
be resorted to in vindication of philosophic interpretation. 

Hobbes's theory is, in its essence, merely a statement of the 
method of the mind's activity. It is a mode of motion. False or 
true, it gives the method, not the nature, of mind. 

Ethically, the interpretation does violence to the doctrine of moral 
responsibility; and, religiously, it is prejudicial to the doctrine of im- 
mortality. A mechanically acting mind, governed by unchangeable 
mathematical principles, is relieved of thai responsibility which a 
mind free from a fixed government must assume ; and it is equally 
clear that, mechanically acting, the mind may be mechanical, that is, 
material in its nature ; hence, it can not be immortal. In its last 
analysis Hobbes's interpretation is materialistic, and suggestive of all 
those dreary conclusions which more recent philosophers, like Hackel, 
Mill, Spencer, and Bain, have affirmed. 

John Stuart Mill, inheriting the materialistic prejudice, threw out 
upon the world an interpretation of mind which, like an attractive 
waif, has been picked up, housed, and adopted as the child of the 



PHRASES OF MILL. 201 

latest schools. Slightly, or at least apparently, less materialistic than 
that of Hobbes, because edged with idealistic phrases, the interpretation 
is as barren of positive results as Sahara of trees. His definitions of 
mind, scattered throughout his works, are not at all engaging or assur- 
ing, nor explicit, definite, broad, coherent. At one time he writes that 
" mind is the mysterious something which feels and thinks," recognizing 
its reflective and emotional character ; at another time he speaks of it 
as "a permanent possibility of feeling," indicating, perhaps, that it 
consists in permanent consciousness; then again he refers to it as a 
"series of feelings," drifting away from the position that it is that 
"mysterious something which feels and thinks;" lastly, he refers to 
it as "an inexplicable tie." 

What is the value of these definitions? In the definition that 
mind is something that thinks, there is a great philosophical truth ; in 
the definition that it is something that feels, there is an equally im- 
portant psychological truth. The mind is the thinking and emotional 
center of man, according to these definitions. 

Looking at the other side of this interpretation, and following 
Mill so far as he ventures to go, we find we have allowed too much 
to his definitions, and given them an overstrained and unintended 
meaning. Mind is a " mysterious something," an " inexplicable tie." 
Of its nature, he holds that we know nothing, That mind thinks, he 
admits, but thinking or thought does not indicate the nature of the 
thing that thinks. Thought is a superficial manifestation of mind, 
utterly non-reflective of its character. The definition that mind con- 
sists in a " series of feelings " is, according to his own confession, 
narrow and inconclusive, for memory, imagination, hope, can not be 
explained as a series of feelings. Thought itself is more than a feel- 
ing. Hobbes defined it a mode of motion ; Mill, a feeling. Between 
thought and feeling there is a chasm that Mill's definitions do not 
bridge ; the two may be coupled — they will not coalesce into unity. 
Thus Mill's interpretation consists in elegant words, fraudulent phrases, 
superficial explanations, and despairing admissions. It is in the line 
of fatalism. 

The interpretation of Spencer is the theory of evolution, a modern 
theory in the form of its statement, yet a conglomeration distinguished 
rather for many-phased conceptions than singleness of view. Evolu- 
tion is the talismanic word of the nineteenth century, explaining all 
things, God excepted, whose existence it in no sense recognizes. In 
the hands of a scholar, such as Herbert Spencer is conceded to be, 
the word has been transposed into doctrine, or brought forward as a 
revelation of the secret processes of mind and matter, supplanting 
idealism in philosophy and theology in religion. If any one, how- 



202 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ever, approach evolution with the expectation that he will know any- 
thing more about mind when he has exhausted Spencer than before, 
he will meet with disappointment, for, while Spencer is voluminous, 
he is not conclusive ; while he is always dogmatic, he is not always 
clear ; while he assumes to be an oracle, he is of doubtful interpretation. 

The initial thought of the evolutionists is that mind did not make 
its appearance in the early stages of the unfolding world, but toward 
its close ; that it did not manifest itself at all in the beginning, but 
dawned at the end of the task of upbuilding ; that it is, therefore, a 
development, and not an original force or guiding power; in other 
words, mind has been evolved just as the race has been evolved, its 
beginnings poor, feeble, unpromising, and rising into greatness with 
its opportunities. Evolved mind, not original or created mind ; a 
mind that has grown from a germ; a mind that was almost nothing 
at first, and became something afterward, plodding through the stages 
of impulse, instinct, desire, aspiration, perception, and conception, 
toward intellectual self-assertion ; this is the theory of evolution re- 
specting mind. Plato believed that mind was first, not last, and that 
the earliest races were no less endowed with memory, imagination, 
volition, cognition, and all the mental faculties, than the Greeks. It 
is singular, if Spencer's theory be true, that he can not point to a race 
deficient in memory, imagination, or will power, and that history- 
furnishes the account of no such a race, or in whom the development 
of mind from one faculty to another can be detected. The historic 
man shows no deficiency of mind; the prehistoric man exhibits the 
mental traces quite as explicitly as the modern man. Mind shows no 
evolution of faculties. Nevertheless, the evolutionist, in violation of 
historic facts and the antecedents of the race, assumes that mind is 
the product of an evolutionary process, still manifest in history. 

The second step follows the first and is consistent with it. Dr. 
David Hartley, after many physiological experiments, began to sus- 
pect that mental action is due to vibrations in the white medullary 
substance of the brain, a theory as insufficient as that which would 
explain electricity by the trembling wire. Conceding that mental 
activity must inspire corresponding activity in the brain, it no more 
explains mental action than muscular movement explains volition. 
Such a theory is a complete reversal of the accepted order of facts in 
mental history. Until Hartley, it was believed that thought causes 
cerebral vibration ; he announced that cerebral vibration produces 
thought. 

Spencer, influenced by the physiological determinations of Hartley, 
turned them to the support of the evolutionary hypothesis of mind, 
and with the aid of association alists, Bain in particular, the popu- 



RELATIONS OF BODY AND MIND. 203 

lar conception has been well-nigh wrecked. The step is a short one 
from Hartley's physiology to Spencer's account of the origin of mind, 
namely, in the physical organization of man. De la Mettrie expresses 
the theory thus: "We are what we are by our organization in the 
first instance, and by instruction in the second." Hartley's theory 
that the brain produces thought, Spencer traDsformed into the larger 
theory that physical activity results in mind. The theories differ 
only in their extent. In keeping with the theory of the origin of 
mind, Spencer teaches that it is subject to an evolutionary process of 
development resulting from a "redistribution of matter and motion," 
agreeing exactly with Mr. Bain, who, as a psychologist, completes 
what Spencer begins as an evolutionist. With Spencer, nerve action 
is the basis of mental action, the Hartley theory in a modified form. 
Hume also speaks of thought as a little agitation of the brain, show- 
ing the influence of the mechanical philosophy. 

Reducing the mind to a physical product, and explaining its 
operations by nervous excitements, Spencer declares the nature of 
mind unknowable, leaving the student of the subject just where he 
was in the beginning. There is a science of mind, says Spencer, but 
not a philosophy of mind. Mind is "static, not dynamic." 

Not intending now to analyze the evolutionary theory, it is im- 
portant to remember that the evolutionist finds it exceedingly difficult 
to account for the self-acting, self-determining power of mind, which 
distinguishes it from the body. Practically, the body is the instru- 
ment of the mind ; evolution must pronounce the mind the instrument 
of the body, but it hesitates to do so. The body may be compared 
to a ship — the mind is the pilot. Sometimes it happens that a ship 
in a storm is uncontrollable even by a skillful pilot, bat the pilot ordi- 
narily is in control. Under certain contingencies, the body may 
usurp control of the mind, as when it is diseased, but that is not the 
natural relation. Except the involuntary processes of nature, such 
as breathing, assimilation, circulation of the blood, pulsations of the 
heart, the mind will determine the movements of the body ; but this 
is not the chief function of mind. It determines for itself as well as 
for the body ; it regulates its own thinking and decides on moral con- 
duct — is master of itself. This proves independence of the body, or, 
at the least, superiority to it. 

Contrary, also, to Spencer, it may finally be demonstrated that the 
body does not produce the mind, but the mind the body. Organiza- 
tion is the basis of mind, according to the evolutionist ; mind is the 
root of organization, according to a well-founded supposition. The 
weakness of evolution in its wholeness is that it produces the higher 
from the lower, when in point of fact the higher produces the lower. 



204 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Chronologically, the lower often seems to precede the higher; but 
actually, the higher is present and working, making its appearance 
later, because it is more elaborate and permanent. The lower, super- 
ficial, temporary, accidental, is first visible ; the higher, refined, force- 
ful, is invisible until a later stage of the development of the lower, 
but it has been in movement all the time. The body, gross, material, 
a finally vanishing substance, is visible; the mind, a positive and 
perpetual force, is invisible. It is the invisible that produces the 
visible ; the laws of the invisible become the laws of the visible ; but 
Spencer teaches that the laws of the visible control the invisible, or 
body both organizes and controls mind. Evolution reverses the his- 
toric and organic order of the two substances. 

Mr. Bain is the representative of the school of associationalists 
who, evolutionists as they are, conduct their interpretation of mind 
to the rankest materialism. In their conclusions they go no farther 
than Mr. Spencer, who himself was an associationalist, but they are 
more specific in details. From the connection between body and 
mind they conclude that they are identical ; but the connection es- 
tablishes relation only, interaction only, not identity. Because the 
body affects the mind, as in disease, or grief or age, there is no 
warrant for concluding that the mind is material ; such effects prove 
relation and interaction, which no theologian will deny. Mr. Bain 
presses the claim of identity by describing a mental fact as a double- 
faced somewhat, being mental on one side and physical on the other, 
obtaining the distinction from Aristotle. A thought has both a sub- 
jective and objective face, but, as it is one thing, so the two faces 
are a double view of the same thing. Even this strained statement 
proves nothing more than relation and interaction, for the two faces 
involve difference, and difference precludes identity. In the fact that 
thought exhausts nervous substance, Bain discovers the origin of 
thought in nerve-action, but it only proves dependence, not origin ; 
relation, not identity. "No phosphorus, no thinking," Moleschott 
declared. This is the same materialism. Intellectual action is a 
nervous shock, according to Bain ; but this proves that the reason 
employs the nerves in thinking, just as the volition employs muscles 
in lifting a weight. Why not style Bain's theory the shock philosophy f 
It shocks both reason and faith. Dr. Hammond speaks of the mind 
as "a force developed by nervous action." It may be true that for 
every mental action there is a nervous response, but it by no means 
establishes the identity of the action and the response. When he as- 
serts that mental and physical states correspond ; that the mental 
series and the physical series are exactly alike ; that physical feeling 
reflects the mental ; we must ask for the evidence. The most that 



METHODS OF MENTAL ACTIVITY. 205 

Mr. Bain has established is that mind and body are related and in- 
teract, and that possibly the law of mental activity controls the 
physical life. Earnestly does he teach that the law of the physical 
life may be the law of the mental life ; this is materialism ; he will 
be surprised to learn that possibly he has demonstrated the reverse, 
if he has demonstrated any thing. The law of lower is not the law 
of the higher, but the law of the higher is molding, and will explain 
the activities of the lower. This is spiritual government extended to 
the physical universe. The Associationalists make much of the laws 
of association by which they affirm the mind is governed in its 
processes of thought; but it should be remembered that all such 
laws explain the method of the mind's action, not mind itself. To de- 
scribe the rotation of the planets according to law, does not explain 
the nature of the planetary substance ; and a knowledge of association, 
as a law of the mind's processes, is not equivalent to a knowledge of 
the mind itself. By the law ot association Bain explains the method 
of the memory, not the memory. Mill said he could not understand 
the memory; Bain does not explain it. To show how the mind 
thinks is one thing ; to show what the mind is, is quite another. 
Bain has been credited in the International Review with tracing 
mental action to its source, but if he has done any thing he has an- 
nounced the method of mental action only ; yet not the only method, 
for associational thought is the result of the law of association. Out- 
side of associational thought is original, intuitional thought; and be- 
yond is creative thought, independent of association and intuition. 
The law of association results in thought in harmony with itself; in- 
tuitional thought must result from another law ; creative thought 
from another still. Associational ism, the last outburst of philosoph- 
ical definition, tested by thought itself, is deficient as a law of mental 
activity, and reveals nothing of the nature of mind. Bain himself, 
while insisting that our conscious states may be analyzed by physical 
law, confesses of pure mind he knows nothing. 

Neither sensationalism, idealism, nor materialism, besides specify- 
ing some of the contents and processes of mind, afford a distinct 
knowledge of its nature, compelling us to seek elsewhere it we ascer- 
tain what is mind. 

Beginning where association alism leaves off, we wish to express 
belief in the great fact that the mind, like the body, like the 
universe, is under law, and that the key to its nature is in the 
supreme law of its being, or the laws of its activity. Matter is not 
alone under law, nor is it under the influence of lower law ; it is under 
the mind's law, so modified as to act without friction and in harmony 
with its nature. 



206 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Contrary to scientists in general, Mr. Huxley agrees with Des- 
cartes that ' •' we know more of mind than we do of body," to which 
we add that a knowledge of the body is possible only as we know 
the mind. Scientists prate of physiological psychology ; a true phi- 
losophy points to psychological physiology. The Duke of Argyll, 
repudiating phrenology, declares its error to be "that physiology can 
ever be the basis of psychology ;" related as the two are, "it is not 
true that psychology is subordinate to physiology." Psychology may 
explain physiology; physiology can never explain psychology. The 
explanation of matter lies in the explanation of mind; but materialists 
have essayed to explain mind by a study of matter. Even Spen- 
cer has admitted that there is no " perceptible or conceivable com- 
munity of nature " between the two sciences, and yet persists in identi- 
fying the laws that govern in the processes of mind and matter. 
Any resemblance between the processes, or any parallel that may be 
shown between mental and physical laws, must be interpreted as the 
evidence of the descent of the mental into the physical, and not of 
the ascent of the physical into the mental; and identity can be 
predicated only on the supposition of the former. It has been as- 
sumed on the basis of the latter ; hence, the destruction wrought by 
materialism. 

Many are the laws of the mind, all of which have not as yet been 
discovered ; but the more conspicuous may be indicated, paralleled to 
some extent by laws observable in the realm of matter. In general 
terms, it may be conceded that the mind acts at times involuntarily, 
even unconsciously, as in dreams, absent-mindedness, and other states, 
just as the involuntary processes of digestion and the blood's circula- 
tion go on constantly but without conscious direction, prompting, or 
interference by the person; and then it acts voluntarily, directing 
commanding, perceiving and conceiving, just as walking and talking 
are under the voluntary control of the person. This . parallelism of 
voluntary and involuntary activity between the body and the mind 
is suggestive of relation, and community of the lower with the 
higher. Mental activity is under specific government, expressing all 
its results in harmony with transparent or occult laws, the investiga- 
tion of which may require patient study, but the rewards thereof 
will be sufficiently compensative and enduring. 

In its historical aspects, the mind displays a tendency to develop- 
ment from incipient stages of thinking to robust reasoning habits, 
and from ignorance to the facts of knowledge. It is a growing sub- 
stance ; in its constitution is the prophecy of growth ; so that among 
the conspicuous laws of mind must be placed the law of growth, paral- 
leled. by a similar law in the realm of matter. In what manner the 



CONGENITALISM- CA USA TION. 207 

mind realizes enlargement, both history and experience make known, 
that is, by growth from within to without, and from without to within ; 
in other words, by sensations and reflections, or again, by appropria- 
tion of the facts of the outer world, and by independent self-action, 
or communion with itself. Its growth is exosmose and end osmose. 
But if the contents of the law of growth are not accurately stated, 
the fact of growth will not be disputed, and at this stage of 
the inquiry the fact is quite as important as the law. Growth 
is a condition of mind; this implies activity, the constituent fact 
of mind. 

In its activity the law of association is very manifest, accounting in 
many cases for thought, conduct, and character; but the guilt of the 
associationalists is the claim that the entire history of mind may be 
reduced to the single principle of association, as if it had no inde- 
pendent power, and especially no intuitional sense. The law of 
association we accept as one of many, and not as the all in all of 
mental activity. 

Almost as conspicuous, at least as dominant in tendency, as the 
preceding, is the law of congenital influence in the structure, if not 
in the methods, of the mind itself. The law of heredity certainly 
manifests itself in the bodily organism of man, which is proof that 
it obtains in mental character ; but to what extent it obtains has not 
been fully determined. Kobert Burns inherited the poetic instinct, 
as Charles Darwin inherited the scientific, inquiring mind. Mental 
tendencies are transmitted, as are physical tendencies. It is not our 
purpose to inquire as to the origin of the mind, but merely to indicate 
the reign of parental influence over it, yet so as not to interfere with 
its legitimate functions or self-evident possibilities. Neither the law 
of association nor congenitalism can rob the mind of its individuality 
or responsibility. The law of association is a method of activity ; 
congenitalism is a hint of character. 

In many of its processes, the mind is under the law of causation, 
or cause and effect ; in fact, the order of thought is the order of 
antecedent and consequent. Pure logic is pure causation. If, as 
Aristotle says, the active reason is "something divine," it is because 
it is orderly in its processes, either a priori or a posteriori or some 
other order in its premises and conclusions. Admitting so much, we 
do not mean that the mind is under inexorable necessity to one 
method in its thinking, for this would reduce it to a machine ; but 
we do mean that, in certain processes, it observes the necessary order of 
causation, without, however, compromising its freedom or independ- 
ence. It is free to think or not to think on a given subject, but if it 
choose a particular subject, as, perhaps, the facts of astronomy and 



208 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

geology, it must have respect to a fixed order of thought, which in 
these cases we denominate the law of causation. 

In the largest sense, the mind acts under the law of freedom in 
perfect harmony with the preceding laws, and, in fact, is reflexively 
their inspiration and sanctification. Without freedom, the laws of 
growth, association, congenitalism, and causation would be inoperative, 
or at least unproductive of a responsible development. Whatever 
else the mind is, it is free; not free from motives, but free to select 
one motive from a number and act accordingly, and free to reject all 
motives and not act at all. To a degree, it is under the law of 
motive in its choices and achievements, but even the motives it respects 
it sometimes originates within itself, demonstrating its independence 
and self-acting character. The mind is free ; not free from intuitions, 
since they are a part of itself ; hence, it is under intuitional law ; 
but neither motives, having an external source, nor intuitions, being 
internal, arrest the free action of the mind in its determinations. 
Motives persuade, intuitions command ; the persuasion is not irresisti- 
ble, the command is that of the mind itself. While philosophers 
have considered the law of freedom in activity as chief in the realm 
of mind, we submit that its greatest law has been overlooked, namely, 
the law of poiver, or the measure of the mind's activity. Freedom re- 
fers to the ease of the mind in activity ; power, to the extent of its 
activity, and hence is a key to its nature. Identifying mental and 
physical action, as the associationalists are striving to do, it is being 
recognized that the brain acts only as it is acted upon, is purely 
passive, like the eye or ear, while the mind self-acts, and is therefore 
independent. A great difference, this, and the measure of mind 
and matter. One is passive, the other active; one is inertness, the 
other energy. The self-acting power of mind implies originating 
power, which can not be assigned to matter. It originates ideas ; it 
weaves thought out of physical materials, or, like the spider, out of 
its own substance; it creates. In a lower sense, it subordinates all 
things to itself; it is making nature tributary to it; it changes 
nature's forms, subordinates nature's laws to its own purposes, and 
exercises dominion in the realm of matter. This is its power : self- 
acting, originating, and subordinating all things to itself. This makes 
it supreme, and defines it by differentia and essentia from every 
thing else. 

What, therefore, is mind? It is something to say that it is an 
immaterial substance, differing from phenomenal substance, not so 
much in its laws as in its qualities ; but this difference has either 
paralyzed the materialist or led him to identify the substances. Iden- 
tity of laws does not imply identity of qualities ; but identity of 



DEFINITIONS OF MIND. 209 

substances requires identity of qualities. The difference between the 
substances is the difference of qualities ; of matter, divisibility, ex- 
tension, density, color, may be predicated ; of mind, volition, cogni- 
tion, perception, desire, may be affirmed. The parallelism or identity 
of the laws governing them must not blind one to the ineradicable 
difference in substantive qualifications. 

Immateriality is not a definite term. It takes one away from mat- 
ter, but it does not clearly translate itself into an intelligible form or 
utterance. What is immateriality? Kant really demonstrated the 
existence of a dynamic self-consciousness, or the consciousness of in- 
dependent, self-acting, self-regulating spirit-power. This, as a defini- 
tion of immaterial substance, is so nearly complete that it needs not 
more than brief expansion to accept it. Mind is not to be defined 
from its qualities, for, while they illustrate its nature, another key 
must be used in analyzing the mind itself. By qualities we mean 
faculties, but, strictly speaking, there are no faculties. Locke's de- 
cision against faculties is impregnable. The mind is a unit, a single 
substance, acting in various ways, but always in complete harmony 
with itself. Dugald Stewart's enumeration of ten faculties is an ex- 
hibition of a very faulty analysis of mental operations, because such 
an exaltation of faculties is at the expense of unity, and it is a ques- 
tion if certain so-called faculties in his list are functions of the mind 
at all. Not by faculties alone may the mind be interpreted. It is 
immateriality ; it is consciousness ; but what kind of consciousness, 
the faculties do not intimate. The key to the nature of mind is its 
laws, not its qualities. 

By virtue of the law of mind, the law of activity, of power, of 
freedom, it is evident that mind is conscious activity, or the activity of 
consciousness; or, to reduce the definition to a single word, mind is 
power, it is force. The measurement of mind involves the measurement 
of its power, but as the power refuses to submit to measure, or even 
regulation, so the mind is beyond measure and stands above well-defined 
limitation. The word power, however, is slightly ambiguous, since it 
may be separated from personality ; and power may be latent or in- 
active ; but mind is not an inactive power, or blind, irrational force. 
To free the definition from ambiguity, it is better to say that mind is 
conscious activity, or the activity of consciousness. Spinoza attrib- 
uted to the mind three potencies, knowledge, action, reason, to 
which we raise no objection, since it is clear that the activity of con- 
sciousness is according to its intuitions, and its reason ; that is, con- 
sciousness is governed by its own laws. Without such laws there is 
no consciousness, and without consciousness no activity. 

If the definition of mind as above given is held to be objection- 

14 



210 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

able, the objection must lie against the form in which the definition 
is expressed, rather than against its essence, for that mind is activity 
is certainly a fact. Whether we say it is the activity of conscious- 
ness, or the activity of spirit, is of no consequence ; spirit is life, ac- 
tivity, power — and consciousness is the same thing. Consciousness 
and spirit are identical; activity is the normal state, the essential 
condition of spirit; hence, the definition must retain the idea of ac- 
tivity ; indeed, it is sufficient if it contain nothing else. James Mill 
says that consciousness is nothing but feeling; but, if this is true, it 
is the feeling of power, of activity. To feel implies the consciousness 
of something. Feeling is impossible without a consciousness of some- 
thing created for it or by it. The mind feels its power, is itself the 
feeling of activity. Whatever the definition of consciousness, it re- 
solves itself into a recognition of existence and activity ; self-con- 
sciousness is the recognition of self-activity. This is mind. 

Bain's classification of the intellect into discrimination, or conscious- 
ness of difference, similarity, or consciousness of agreement, and re- 
tentiveness, or consciousness of acquisition, is in harmony with our 
conception. To discriminate is to act ; to agree is to act ; to acquire 
is to act. Discrimination, agreement, acquisition, the three functions 
of intellect, are the processes of consciousness in activity. This is 
mind. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE AREA OP HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 

ANCIENT Pyrrhonism has been reproduced in the agnosticism of 
modern times, with the difference that the recent error is worse 
than the first. Pyrrhonism doubted and waited; agnosticism denies 
every thing and concedes nothing. The Pyrrhonist walked in the 
twilight, uncertain that he saw any thing distinctly ; the agnostic 
walks "late at night in iEgina," certain that he sees nothing. The 
one bruited the doctrine of uncertainty ; the other proclaims the 
dogma of ignorance. 

To know or not to know is as important as Hamlet's aphorism, 
"to be or not to be." Does man know any thing? What is it that 
he knows ? How does he know what he knows ? What are the 
boundaries of the intellect, and how are they indicated ? Is the in- 
tellect a circumscribed power? What is the value of knowledge? 
These and cognate questions the inquirer is bound to consider, since 



ADMISSIONS OF IGNORANCE. 211 

philosophy itself, no less than religion, is dependent on the validity 
of their solution. The assumption that man knows nothing and can 
know nothing; that his estate is one of pitiable and unending dark- 
ness; that so-called light is a delusion, and faith in it a superstition; 
that the expectation of progress is a courageous but profitless vanity ; 
that supposed consciousness of truth is only a form of self-flattery ; 
involves so many incongruities and absurdities, and so strikes at the 
root of things, that in righteous self-defense the mind must declare 
its prerogatives, and assert its possibilities in the realm of what is 
called the knowable.- 

At this stage of the discussion we are prepared to make several 
important admissions, all the more necessary in order to simplify the 
treatment of the subject, and avoid unnecessary conflict with the 
agnostic. It is admitted that man does not and possibly can not 
know all things ; that as infinity transcends the finite, the finite may 
find it impossible completely to know the infinite, or things that are 
exclusively and unrelatedly infinite. It is admitted that, owing to 
defective methods of human inquiry, many facts, truths, laws, and 
relations are unknown that are not necessarily and absolutely unknow- 
able, and which will probably be discovered as improved methods of 
inquiry are adopted. It is admitted that man's preferences for truth 
are so vitiated by natural tastes for lower things, and so inactive in 
assertion that he can rise but slowly from darkness into light, but the 
ascent is gloriously possible, as Plato's men emerged at last from their 
caves. It is admitted that special truth labeled ' ' supernatural " often 
meets with obstructive disfavor among those who profess to be in 
search of all truth, and that this cherished prejudice forbids the im- 
mediate ascertainment of the highest truth, especially by those seek- 
ing it. It is admitted that the exact value of truth has not been 
philosophically determined further than that a knowledge of it would 
prove a convenience, but is not esteemed a necessity. It is admit- 
ted that such are the physical necessities of men and the time re- 
quired by their occupations in supplying them, that few can devote 
themselves sufficiently to the investigation of the highest problems of 
truth ; hence, the race's rapid advance in knowledge is hardly to be 
expected. 

These admissions, and many others of a similar nature that readily 
suggest themselves, imply an imperfect state of human knowledge, 
and the need of advancement all along the line of speculation and 
inquiry. From such admissions, frankly offered, agnosticism has has- 
tily inferred the necessary ignorance and the non-improvability of 
man, and settled down into that bliss which is supposed to spring 
from intellectual know-nothingism. The inference of agnosticism — a 



212 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

wild bird in paradise — has not a single premise on which to rest its 
feather-plucked and eyeless form, and not an inch of ground where 
its bleeding and tangled feet may stand. On the contrary, the as- 
sumption of human knowledge, the certainty of its facts, the trust- 
worthiness of its deductions, and the infinite scope of its possibilities, 
may be proclaimed from evidences alike entertaining and assuring. 
The task of the vindication of man's inheritance to a realm of knowl- 
edge, not measurable by words, we now assume. 

The foundation of this assumption is in the mind itself, its capac- 
ity and aspiration, the two conditions of knowledge, both of its nature 
and limitations. The measure of mind is its capacity, as the measure 
of a river is its basin or banks. The spirit of mind expresses itself 
in a capacious yearning for knowledge, in a subtle hostility to igno- 
rance, and a persistent seeking after truth. The mind is that vital 
something that prompts to inquiry, demands explanations of mysteries, 
laughs at fables and superstitions, and mourns over denials of its 
requests. The truth-prompting factor of the mind is proof of its 
ability to know and understand truth. Equipped with mind, it is as 
evident that man is related to the realm of knowledge as that, fur- 
nished with eyes, he is related to physical things or the realm of 
observation. Only by a denial of mind, or a rejection of those facul- 
ties we denominate mental, and which distinguish man from the 
mastodon, can the possibilities of agnosticism be entertained. The 
ground-work of the subject is the intellectual fitness of man for 
knowledge, not how much he has acquired, or whether he has ac- 
quired any, nor whether his methods for arriving at truth are con- 
sistent or inconsistent, but whether in his mental constitution there is 
an irrepressible aptitude for knowledge, any receptive or open-door 
faculties seeking knowledge, any spontaneous affinities with truth, 
any unquenchable purpose to find the truth. Without this inbred 
predisposition to knowledge, this inherited and dominant familiarity 
with the kindred forms of truth, knowledge is impossible. If mind 
is mere nerve-force, and mental action a physical throb, agnosticism 
may be true ; but if it is a divinely illuminated entity, a spirit-acting 
force, agnosticism is false, for the realm of knowledge may be entered 
by such a force. Mind admitted, knowledge is possible. 

Assuming the possibility of knowledge from the fact of mind, we 
proceed with our inquiry in the form of a fourfold analysis : I. The 
source of knowledge. II. The subject-matter of knowledge, the real 
or the phenomenal. III. The limitations of knowledge. IV. The 
methods of acquiring knowledge. 

The source of knowledge is a philosophical problem over which 
the greatest thinkers have bent their energies, pronouncing results 



EVILS OF SENSATIONALISM. 213 

neither wholly satisfactory nor totally unsatisfactory. Does the know- 
ing, perceiving, thinking mind know by an intuitional power, or by 
immediate revelations of truth through supernatural agencies, or does 
it strive for knowledge through physical avenues? One is not com- 
pelled to make choice here, for it is possible that the mind arrives at 
knowledge in the three ways indicated, depending not on any single 
source or method for a sufficiency of truth. Philosophers have been 
guilty of advocating single sources or methods ; hence the confusion, 
the utter irreconcilability of their theories with the facts of psychologi- 
cal history. 

The old theory of sensationalism, that sense-perception is the foun- 
dation of mind-conception, or knowledge derived through the senses, 
which has corrupted philosophy from the days of Aristotle until now, 
bears the mark of the common deficiency ; it is too exclusive as an 
explanation of the mind's activities and resources, and fails to account 
for knowledge. 

Among the Greeks, according to Cud worth, the intellectual 
states which had a purely internal origin, were named noemata, or 
thoughts ; while those of external origin were called aisthemata, or 
sensations. By virtue of the sensations the external intellect is de- 
veloped ; by virtue of thoughts the internal intellect unfolds. But 
the empirical psychologist knows no difference between thought and 
sensation; sensation is thought, and the external is the internal in- 
tellect. This is a blending of things entirely separate. 

Aristotle, though not the first teacher of empiricism, gave it phil- 
osophical form, and must be charged with the responsibility of its 
introduction. Plato began with ideas ; Aristotle with things. Plato's 
starting-point was the ego ; Aristotle's the non-ego. In elucidation of 
the mind Aristotle classified it into two parts — the Passive or Recep- 
tive Intellect, and the Active or Creative Intellect — a division, if 
properly qualified or expressed, not specially objectionable ; but it has 
wrought incalculable mischief in that the empirical schools of phil- 
osophy, ignoring the creative character of intellect, have constructed 
an argument from its purely receptive character for the rankest ma- 
terialism. The mind may be both passive and active, says Aristotle ; 
the empiricist says it is passive only ; the truest philosophy will pro- 
nounce it active only, and never passive. The condition of mind is 
activity. The passivity of mind opens the way for sensationalism 
as the source or theory of knowledge. Locke, taking it up, 
found it convenient to deny to mind not only activity, but in- 
heritance, or possessions. It is an empty thing, ready, like a cask, 
to be filled with whatever is poured into it. Passivity, emptiness, 
empiricism — these are logical steps ; and Locke took them, since 



214 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

whose day a large brood of sensational theories have hovered over the 
psychological realm. The French philosophers carried Locke's con- 
jectures to the wildest extremes, denying immortality and responsi- 
bility, with a plausibility that threatened the extinction of the moral 
foundations of society. 

Is there no truth in sensationalism ? Is it all an absurdity ? Was 
Locke entirely mistaken ? Was Aristotle misunderstood and perverted, 
or is there some truth in the theory of empiricism ? It must be con- 
ceded that the senses are avenues of some kinds of knowledge ; that 
is, many streams of truth seem to flow along the channels of the 
senses, and at least alphabetic or symbolic knowledge is the result. 
An ox looks upon the landscape that attracts the eye of Landseer ; 
a dog may hear the organ whose keys Beethoven fingers to the delight 
of thousands ; but there is a difference in the results of seeing and 
hearing, and it is this difference that makes for the immortality of 
man, and which is singularly overlooked by materialists. The ox is 
not affected by beauty, or botanical structure, or laws, or the relation 
of part to part ; he can not analyze the flower or interpret the mean- 
ing of the plains and the mountains ; he can not measure the dimen- 
sions of a field or calculate the age of a tree. Nor can the dog explain 
the process of hearing, or distinguish the notes of the organ, or sepa- 
rate the melody from the discord of the instrument. Sense-knowledge, 
or knowledge by sensation, must be superficial. Eyes and ears are 
the gateways of the streams — nothing more. They do not know any 
thing ; they report only what passes through them. Back of these re- 
porters must be something that distinguishes in the reports the true 
and the false, the beautiful and the deformed, the right and the 
wrong. It is the classification of the reports of the senses that consti- 
tutes knowledge, and it is this power of classification that distinguishes 
man from the ox. He sees more than form and color ; from these he 
goes to structure, law, growth, beauty, inferring scientific principles, 
and fashioning at last the sciences themselves. Sense-knowledge 
stops with the outline of things, a mere recognition of their existence, 
without the recognition of their properties, laws, harmonies and func- 
tions. It furnishes materials, but can not combine them into truth, 
or even index their meaning. It may spell out the words, but can not 
pronounce, much less define them. Evidently, then, to assume, as 
does James Mill that all our knowledge of objects is the sensations they 
produce, or that sense-perception is the sole inspiration of human 
thinking, is to assume what is objectionable on the ground of its su- 
perficiality, for it does not include all the facts of knowledge. 

In man's present state he is somewhat dependent on empirical 
sources for knowledge of physical things ; but this dependence must 



INTUITIONAL KNOWLEDGE. 215 

not be confounded with origin, a distinction that philosophy has not 
recognied. Malebranche insisted that the material world can not im- 
press itself upon the immaterial soul, that our ideas of things are not 
derived from the things themselves, a reaffirmation, as the reader will 
remember, of the dualism of Descartes ; but this is as extreme as dualism 
itself. The defect of the Cartesian teaching is its complete separation 
of mind and matter, whereas they sustain mutual relations, and ex- 
hibit interactions in their history and manifestations. Sensationalism 
is defective in holding that the external world is the source of knowl- 
edge ; dualism is equally defective in teaching the absolute separation 
of mind and matter ; while with Beneke we believe that the " with- 
out " stimulates the mind's activity, and yet, differing from him, that 
it has an independent power, which enables it to create thought and 
arrive at truth without the influence of any empirical auxiliary 
whatever. 

To notice this independent power is now proper. In the natural 
order of the mind's development the intuitions make themselves felt 
first, having authority over sensations, conduct, and the outward life, 
and constitute the fiber of original experiences and history. Intui- 
tional knowledge, or the contents of the consciousness, are of the 
highest, purest, and simplest kind, being different in this respect from 
sensational knowledge, which is always complex and somewhat delu- 
sive. From a sensation arises a complex notion, as the touch of a 
piece of marble suggests more than the idea of hardness or whiteness ; 
from an intuition emerges a single, simple, decisive idea, as self-exist- 
ence, identity. The complexity of sensational ideas led Locke to 
speak of them as chimerical, as the centaur is a complex but chimer- 
ical idea. Consciousness, or an intuitional idea, always suggesting 
necessary truth, presents it in simplest form, from which combina- 
tions and complexities may arise, but in no case are they chimerical. 
A chimerical sensation is possible ; a chimerical intuition is an 
absurdity. 

According to Hume, the consciousness is panoramic, reflecting 
images, ideas, facts, but it is also dynamic ; that is, self-impelling, or 
a reservoir of self-contained, immutable truth. Not only are images 
or impressions of truth seen in the consciousness, but truths them- 
selves, imbedded, as it were, in the very constitution of the moral 
nature. Intuitional truth is necessary in its very nature, but Spencer 
repudiates the theory of necessary truth ; but if intuitionalism can 
be destroyed only by the sacrifice of the contents of consciousness, or 
the primary ideas of the intellect, it will endure until the end of the 
race. Zeno the Stoic agreed that the mind entertains ideas not de- 
rived from the senses ; that they are connatural to us ; that they be- 



216 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

long prima fade to the mind; that they are intuitions. Reid, in 
framing his theory of " original suggestion," protested against the 
Lockeian formula of a barren mind, and insisted that the mind drew 
from its mysterious depths ideas which not only were regulative, but 
constitutive in essence and function. Among these ideas are those of 
self-existence, identity, space, time, unity, number, causation, ac- 
countability, right, and wrong. Jacobi said we see God through the 
intuitions. These are necessary truths, beliefs independent of ex- 
perience, primary conceptions, the noemata of the Greeks, the inter- 
nal intellect acting and originating for itself. 

The theory of the intuitional source of knowledge is as old as sen- 
sationalism, Plato having held that the human mind contained ideas 
not derived from experience, and that they were connatural to it. 
This conception of the mind, or idealism, drove Aristotle into sensa- 
tionalism, and the two doctrines have clashed in the conflicts of the 
ages. The existence of the intuitions or intuitional faculties is not 
now in dispute ; we accept them as the facts of our mental nature, a 
part of our intellectual furniture, by the use of which certain truths, 
called primary or axiomatic, we recognize. That an effect must have 
a cause is a rational, an intuitional truth. The belief in the exist- 
ence of God, the notions of right and wrong, the haunting sense of 
responsibility for conduct, the correlated ideas of finite and infinite, 
unity and multiplicity, and quality and substance, and all those in- 
stincts which guide in morals, relationships, occupations, and re- 
ligions are classed among those truths denominated intuitional. 
Certain mathematical axioms or principles also belong here. Locke 
is mistaken when he says they can not be pointed out. In a sense, 
they are born in the mind without scientific influence, aid, or 
regulation. 

Intuitional truths are those formerly known as " innate ideas," 
against which the sensationalists aimed their thunderbolts ; but cer- 
tain it is that such truths exist, or the mind is not a spiritual entity. 
It is either a perfect blank, a reservoir of emptiness, or it possesses 
inherent truths. Between the doctrine of innate ideas, as Plato 
teaches in the Phcedo, and the tabula rasa conception of Locke, one 
must prefer the former. Accepting Plato on this point, we do not 
accept his doctrine of reminiscence as the explanation of knowledge 
or the explanation of intuitional truth, for that involves his doctrine 
of the pre-existence of the soul. Intuitionalism does not necessarily 
involve pre-existence, as pre-existence does not involve intuitionalism. 
The connection between them is the result of a philosophical strain 
which philosophy can not bear. 

What is the mind ? Is it any thing ? Is it a waxen tablet for 



THE LAW OF SPONTANEOUS REASON. 217 

receiving impressions, or has it the power of making impressions? 
Has it knowledge of itself, or only the capacity for knowledge? Of 
steam it may be said that it is not only capable of power, but also it 
is power, and when employed it is power in exercise. Latent power 
is power. Latent knowledge is knowledge. The mind possesses 
knowledge in itself, is full, not empty ; hence education is literally a 
drawing out of the contents of the mind, and not putting into it, any 
thiDg from the outer world. It is not a citadel of darkness, but a 
center of light. The mind goes not to the world for knowledge, but 
the world goes to the mind for truth. Intuitional truth precedes sen- 
sational truth, and is the test of it. No truth can be accepted that 
contradicts the intuitions ; but truths may be received that contradict 
the sensations. Intuitional truth arises from the constitution of the 
mind, is primary, fundamental, to be received without challenge; 
sensational truth arises from the fluctuating reports of the senses, and 
needs to be carefully scrutinized before being adopted. 

Kindred to the contents of the consciousness are the products of 
the spontaneous reason, as materials of knowledge, to be appropriated 
and used in the grand march of the ages. By the spontaneous 
reason is meant neither intuition on the one hand, which is not 
reason, nor reflection on the other, which is directed reason, but a 
midway functional force, an intellectual rational conviction, consist- 
ent in essence, and self- vindicating in its final form. There is in man 
a spontaneous, unreflective reason in contrast to that which reflects, 
syllogizes, analyzes, synthesizes. Often in the unlearned there is a 
clearness in the apperceptions of reason that, being wholly spontaneous, 
without any premeditated analysis, astonishes the learned. The nat- 
ural philosopher and his servant reach the same conclusion respect- 
ing the agency of fire in the economy of nature ; both agree as to 
its relation to life ; the one frames complex notions, the other simple, 
but the conclusions are the same. In a simple way the spontaneous 
reason conducts to a knowledge of substance, power, being; gives 
tokens of a true ontology, while the developed reason fashions them 
into formulae. 

Kant was fond of saying that knowledge takes the form of the 
mind, one of the mischievous errors in his philosophy, since it is fatal 
to uniformity of knowledge of truth. If the mind give form to 
knowledge, as the color of a vessel appears to give color to the liquid 
in it, then intuitional knowledge will be individualized, and each 
man, as Protagoras taught, will be the measure of all things, and all 
truths as well. Reid well says, " When we have an idea of some ob- 
ject as round, we are not to infer that the mental state is possessed 
of the same quality ; when we think of any thing as extended, it is 



218 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

not to be supposed that the thought itself has extension ; when we 
behold and admire the varieties of color we are not at liberty to in- 
dulge the presumption that the inward feelings are painted over 
and radiant with corresponding hues." Clearly, knowledge is not 
governed by the form of the mind ; truth is not mind-molded, but 
mind-assimilated, mind-received, mind-projected. 

If the spontaneous reason is a source of knowledge, Keason itself, 
or Keflection, must be allowed a place also in the category. Hegel 
once taught that the acquisition of knowledge is possible through 
pure thought, a position which contemporaneous philosophy 
unanimously condemned. Is pure thinking a possibility? May 
mental absorption be so complete, so uninfluenced by any thing but 
mind, that new truth will be the product of its soliloquies? The 
Athenians held their assemblies at night that they might not be dis- 
turbed by visible tilings — can the mind retire within itself, or shut 
the doors of the visible and in itself contemplate the great problems 
of theology, psychology, and ontology? The rational power, ex- 
ercised exclusively upon invisible things and guided by its own cat- 
egories of thought, must succeed in the acquisition of intellectual 
truth ; pure thinking under such circumstances must result in pure 
knowledge. By reflection, however, we do not mean pure thought 
in the Hegelian sense but that faculty which in possession of facts 
and truths is able to generalize them, and combine them into systems. 
The reflective reason could not exercise if there were no objects of 
reflection. It moves out, therefore, from its own domain in search of 
reprisals in the form of truths and facts, unfurling its flag upon the 
widened seas of knowledge, and running down the piratical crafts of 
error, and fraternizing with all truth. Reason may occupy itself with 
nature searching for its laws, or with man probing mind, or with 
God bringing him nearer to the view. In whatever direction it goes, 
it will find the path broad, long, perhaps thorny, but it has a goal, 
the discovery of truth in some of its myriad forms. Reason is dia- 
lectic in form, substance, authority. 

Not all truth is attainable through sensation, intuition, or the 
double reason ; there is a realm of knowledge that sense-perception 
can not invade, and which the intuitional power can not fully com- 
mand. If a realm of truth is beyond the invasion of the senses, the 
intuitions, and the reasons, then the source of knowledge must be 
beyond these instruments of inquiry. In both cases the supposition 
is correct. There is a realm of truth beyond the sensational, the in- 
tuitional, the rational ; there is therefore a source of knowledge not 
yet mentioned. 

Such truth is wholly supernatural, supersensible ; the source of 



MEANING OF INSPIRATION. 219 

knowledge, inspiration and revelation. The difference between in- 
spiration and revelation is very like the difference between the spon- 
taneous and the reflective reason, both essentially the same, but in form 
and extension different. Revelation is written inspiration. Inspiration, 
as a source of knowledge, is treated with indifference by modern 
philosophy, but Plato in the Ion speaks of a divine power moving 
men, which he compares to magnetism, and also to the influence of 
a god on the priestesses of Bacchus, which enables them to draw milk 
and honey from rivers. If poets and musicians and priestesses may 
be influenced by the gods, why may not the magnetic power come 
upon men in search of truth and help them to find it? This is in- 
spiration, a purely philosophical doctrine when thoroughly understood. 

In the theological sense, inspiration is the impression of the divine 
Spirit upon the human mind conveying positive knowledge, or so 
illuminating the understanding that its conceptive power is intensified 
to that degree that it easily discovers and readily discerns the truth. 
In another form, inspiration is a divine sensation, the counterpart of 
physical sensation. Both have external sources, the one material, 
the other spiritual. Inspiration is as valid as sensationalism ; it is 
sejisationalism refined. The only ground of assault upon it lies in 
the results of the higher sensation, which, however, are in keeping 
with its sphere of action and influence. Pure or physical sensations 
result in external knowledge ; refined or divine sensations result in 
supernatural knowledge. In the one case, matter impresses mind, and 
mind becomes acquainted with matter; in the other, God impresses 
mind, and mind becomes acquainted with God. Sensation is Nature 
rapping at the door of the intellect ; inspiration is God tapping on 
the windows of the soul. 

It should be remembered that if God is what he is supposed to 
be, a personal, all-wise, merciful being, he will be as eager to com- 
municate himself to man as man will be to receive the communica- 
tion. If he is the universal mind, the mind of minds, himself the 
AH -thought, it is inconceivable that he would not impress himself upon 
mind wherever he found it. Nature, hard, mindless, characterless, 
touches us at five points, speaking by signs and symbols and in a 
language we partly understand ; is the mighty God, mind of minds, 
unable to reach us? As Prof. Bowne puts it, "If God is finite we 
can reach him ; if he is infinite he can reach us." Inspiration is 
God reaching us. The Duke of Argyll phrases faith in inspiration 
in the following manner : " That the human mind is always in some 
degree, and that certain individual minds have been in a special de- 
gree, reflecting surfaces, as it were, for the verities of the unseen and 
eternal world, is a conception having all the characters of coherence, 



220 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

which assure us of its harmony with the general constitution and the 
common course of things." The mind is a reflecting surface for eternal 
truths — this is inspiration, and as philosophical as to say that the mind 
is a reflecting surface for physical truth. 

What are the truths derived from inspiration? The truths of in- 
spiration, like the truths of sensation, intuition, and reason, are in 
harmony with their source, the Artesian principle being as applicable 
in the one case as in the other. Truth rises no higher than its 
source. From sensation a knowledge is obtained of material phe- 
nomena; from intuition, mind-truths; from reason, rational truths; 
from inspiration, inspired or supernatural truths. God in his attri- 
butes, eternal, infinite, omnipotent, omniscent, immutable, holy, 
merciful, just; God in his relations to the world as Creator, Preserver, 
Upholder; God as Redeemer, Judge, Rewarder; the eternal world, 
the immortality of man, the character and possibilities of the soul in 
the future state ; these and many other truths are valid subjects of in- 
spiration, without which, indeed, they can not be known. Granting 
the necessity of inspiration as a means of knowledge of supernatural 
truth, it has been alleged that it is difficult to discriminate between 
truth professedly acquired by inspiration, and that which mysticism, 
fanaticism, and superstition have endeavored to fasten upon the world 
as from God; that is, the line of difference between inspiration and 
superstition is not clearly drawn, hence the latter often imposes itself 
for the former. The objection rests upon historic data, and is ad- 
mitted to be forceful. The Neoplatonists, as sincere as any religious- 
philosophical sect, plunged into the excesses of mysticism, claiming 
inspiration for their utterances, and divine direction for their deeds. 
What was the claim of Pope Pius IX. to infallibility but the assertion 
of inspiration? Errors, false doctrines, misinterpretations of Scrip- 
tural truth, and fanaticism in all forms, have been sustained by the 
assumption of divine support, discrediting the doctrine of inspiration 
by teachings subversive of it. 

Allowing that the doctrine has been perverted, misused, and cred- 
ited with unworthy associations, it must still be maintained that in- 
spiration, that is, the in-breathing of spiritual knowledge by the 
divine Spirit, is a probability, a certainty ; and it is for man, by the 
right use of reason, so far as it will apply, to separate between the 
true and the false, the human and the divine — a task attended, we 
admit, with no little embarrassment. 

Owing to these embarrassments, there is need of a supplemental, 
or final and satisfactory source of knowledge, which is found in reve- 
lation, or the written form of inspired truth. The value of the 
written form is that it remains the same through the ages, and can 



NECESSITY OF REVELATION. 221 

be tested by one age as well as another ; it varies not, hence it is a 
standard of truth. 

The integrity of the alleged revelation of truth we do not now 
consider, but mention it as one of the accepted sources of knowledge 
to millions. How a truth can be revealed in the way claimed involves 
a study of supernatural methods which for the most part are myster- 
ious, but which are as reliable as natural methods, which are no less 
mysterious also. Familiarity with empirical methods does not enable 
us to explain them ; and intuitional processes are as obscure to us as 
the miraculous. Sense-knowledge is as mysterious as inspired knowl- 
edge. Whether knowledge come to us from the world through the 
senses, or from God through the mind alone, the mystery is as great 
in the one case as the other, and philosophy, accepting one, must 
finally accept the other. 

The necessity of the revelation of higher truth is also as conclusive 
as the necessity of knowledge of it at all; and the alternative is, 
either not to know it at all, or to know it by the supernatural method 
of revelation. Accepting revelation, what a realm of truth is open 
to human vision and to the possession of faith ! St. Aquinas used 
to remark that the beginnings of knowledge are the morning walks 
of faith, but it is equally true to say that the beginnings of faith in 
revelation are the morning walks of knowledge. Not that the knowl- 
edge thus furnished is complete, but it is a key to openings in the 
vast realm of supernaturalism, a knowledge of which is desirable. 
By the sense-method our knowledge of the physical world is painfully 
incomplete, and were the mind to rely upon eyes and ears alone we 
should walk in a blacker than Egyptian darkness. The intuitional 
process reports a limited number of truths, without explanation, im- 
posing them upon our recognition by the great weight of their author- 
ity. So revealed truth may be wanting in that thoroughness and 
completeness which belongs to the other methods, and still be a reve- 
lation. Concerning revealed truths, we are emphatic in the assertion 
that, since they are of God on the supposition that there is a revela- 
tion at all, they are more reliable than either the intuitional, which is 
of man, or the sensational, which is of matter. Revealed truth 
should have the greatest authority, sensational truth the least. The 
one brings us nearer to realities, exposes the invisible foundation of 
things, makes the universe transparent, and sounds like the voice 
of God ; the other acquaints us with phenomena alone, and points to 
forms. That which philosophy rejects should have the first, and that 
which it accepts the last, place in the category of sources of human 
knowledge. 

It is not our intention to vindicate the Scriptures in any theologi- 



222 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

cal sense, but to consider them philosophically as a source of knowl- 
edge. Fitche boldly acknowledged the necessity of a revelation ; 
Schelling, though prejudiced against the Bible as a whole, adopted 
Johannean Christianity as the best exponent of the highest truth ; 
Hegel regarded Christ as the "self-externalizing idea;" Locke rever- 
ently read the Scriptures, and was a Christian believer. 

Turn to Revelation, and what are its teachings respecting funda- 
mental problems? In the writings of Moses, as throughout the 
Bible, the existence of God is assumed but not proved. Is the as- 
sumption unphilosophical ? Is it an instance of a petitio principii? 
Philosophy, failing for the want of a proper starting-point, has invariably 
ended in fog or drift; Revelation, beginning with the First Cause, the 
principle of principles, the being of beings, explains all things. The 
beginning must be mind or matter, but matter is an effect of mind. 
Philosophy, contemplatiug the effect, has attempted to find its way 
through the a posteriori method back to cause ; Revelation, contem- 
plating the cause, has gone a priori to the manifold effect. In method 
of procedure one is the reverse of the other. Beginning with the 
Beginner, Revelation is a narration of God's unfolding in the universe 
of matter and his presence in human history, accounting for worlds, 
races, and destinies; beginning with effects, philosophy tediously es- 
says to climb to summits beyond its vision, lighting its pathway with 
sparks of its own kindling. Revelation is a descent of truth ; philos- 
ophy an attempted ascent to truth. Revelation is explicit where 
philosophy is vague ; full, where it is incomplete; certain, where it is 
in doubt ; knowing, where it is ignorant. In revelation we attain to 
a knowledge of God ; in philosophy he is the great unknown. 

In respect to man, his character, the account of his moral weak- 
ness, the possibility of his restoration to moral greatness, Revelation 
speaks a specific truth. Plato, acknowledging the impurity of the 
race, prescribed intellectual discipline as the chief means of purifica- 
tion ; Gautama prescribed penances and transmigrations ; Spencer 
foresees the natural evanescence of evil ; the Bible preaches regenera- 
tion and sanctification. 

In respect to Nature, origin, character, and destiny, the Bible 
is equally definite and satisfactory ; the universe is the effect of the 
creative impulse in a personal deity. Man is as much bound to 
consider the teachings of Christ, Moses, Isaiah, and Paul, as he is to 
heed the oracles of Plato, Kant, Hamilton, Hume, and Spencer. On 
intellectual grounds, not more can be claimed for the latter than for 
the former; on spiritual grounds, the former must be preferred to 
the latter. 

Human knowledge, as we have seen, has a six-fold source, to wit: 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF KNOWLEDGE. 223 

sensation, intuition, spontaneous reason, reflection, inspiration, revela- 
tion ; but these may be reduced to three : Nature, the source of sen- 
sation ; Mind, including the intuitions, the reason, and reflection ; 
and Revelation, including inspiration. The first is the simplest, the 
commonest, the rudest ; the second, more refined, but limited ; the 
third, divine. Nature, Mind, Revelation — these three, but the great- 
est of these is Revelation. 

The next step in the inquiry is that which concerns the subject- 
matter of knowledge. What do we know ? Is knowledge of the real, 
or of the phenomenal only? This is a broad and profound question, 
to be answered, if answered at all, in the spirit of carefulness and 
humility, for the agnosticism of the day is persuaded that absolute 
knowledge is impossible. Some things all men think they know, and 
they would repudiate the philosophy that denied to them such knowl- 
edge. They know, as they think, the difference between a square 
and a circle, not so much as mathematical statements as forms of 
matter. Granted, then, that men understand the differences in the 
forms of matter. This is a beginning, and, as knowledge, is valuable. 
It involves magnitude, extension, figure, a great many mathematical 
ideas applied to planets and objects on the earth. No one would say 
this is complete knowledge ; no one should say it is knowledge re- 
specting the object at all, as the form of a thing is not the thing 
itself. Form and substance are by no means the same. Glass may 
be shaped into a bowl, or cup, or ball — the form different, the sub- 
stance the same. Hence, we must advance a little, that is, know 
something more than the form of matter to know what matter is. 

Many men believe they can name some of the laws of matter. 
They know the difference between inertia and motion, attraction and 
repulsion, cohesion and adhesion, chemical affinity and gravitation, 
and understand the late doctrines of the conservation and correlation 
of forces. Granted that our familiarity with nature is on the in- 
crease, in that its laws are being discovered and understood. This is 
a great gain, for by such knowledge we may explain the rotations of 
the planets, calculate their distances from the sun, and apprehend 
the commonest activities of the natural world. But should one ferret 
out all the laws of nature, and comprehend thoroughly the govern- 
ment of the physical universe, one could not affirm that he had com- 
plete knowledge of things. If there is a difference between the form 
of matter and its substance, there is even a greater difference between 
a law of matter and its substance. Prof. Bowne, the gifted meta- 
physician of Boston, insists that a knowledge of the law of a thing is 
a knowledge of the thing itself; and it is admitted that, in the light 
of his elaboration, the statement seems unobjectionable ; but we can 



224 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

afford to pause before accepting it fully. Theoretically speaking, the 
substance might exist without the law and without the form ; it might 
be formless, it might be lawless. Law is no part of matter, is not 
the key to the substance of matter, although it is a key to the ex- 
planation of matter. To know the universe, he must needs know 
more than the laws which produced the universe ; they explain the 
how, do they divine the what? Is the how the what? Can one know 
any thing beyond law? 

Here is a bar of iron — what can one know of iron ? That it is 
malleable, ductile, hard, non-transparent, heavy, solid, durable, useful. 
This is an enumeration of some of the properties of iron, a complete 
list of which would seem to broaden our knowledge of this very use- 
ful metal. Here is a branch of cedar, or there a block of marble, 
the properties of each being distinct and clearly defined. This is a 
knowledge of the properties of matter, an approach to a knowledge 
of its substance, and an advance over a knowledge of the forms of 
matter. Without this knowledge, it would not be possible to use 
matter. We must know that coal is combustible in order to use it in 
our stoves, grates, and furnaces. To understand properties is appar- 
ently akin to an understanding of substance. 

The serious question is now at hand : Is a knowledge of properties 
complete knowledge? Do we know the substance when we enumerate 
qualities? Do we know a leaf when we say it is green, rectangular, 
sweet? We are in trouble at this point. No one will say that a 
knowledge of one property of an object is a satisfactory or complete 
knowledge of it ; and it is a question if a knowledge of all the parts 
is equivalent to a knowledge of the whole. Between properties and 
substance there is a wide gulf; is it impassable? If not impassable, 
what is the bridge ? Can we go back of properties or beyond them 
in the direction of the real? or must we stop with properties? The 
delicate threads or cables extending from properties to substance are 
invisible, ambiguous, anonymous, difficult to trace, since they do not 
break out in concrete forms, or in visible points or knots. We say 
we are in trouble. Give us one thread, and we will pull our way 
through to the Real. Is there any realf or is our knowledge of the 
phenomenal a knowledge of all that exists? Is not this idea of a real, 
as distinguished from the phenomenal, a mere fiction, a dream of the 
philosopher? or is it a substantive, whose manifestations are the 
properties, forms, laws, and whatever is visible? We can not part 
with the idea of the real ; we can not think the phenomenal to be 
the all in all ; but how to connect or trace the connection is a task 
which many assume can not be accomplished. Let us assume there 
is such a connection ; let us assume the reality of the real ; let us 



LAW THE GREAT REALITY. 225 

plunge from the phenomenal toward the real, whether we alight in 
darkness or on the solid granite of reality. Our track is along the 
line of law. The connecting link between phenomena and reality is law. 
The explanation of all things is law. 

Is law the great reality ? Is law substance ? Actually, substance 
without law is impossible ; law is the producing agency of substance ; 
law is the explanation of substance. By this we do not mean gen- 
eral laws, or the category of laws as enounced by science, but the 
particular law by which a particular thing is produced, the law of its 
existence, or the law of its activity. In this higher sense law is sub- 
stance, and a knowledge of one is a knowledge of the other. The 
highest knowledge is not of forms, nor of properties, nor of general 
laws, but of the law of forms, the law of properties, the law of the 
unity of substance. Under this transformation the world is but the 
effigy of the creative principle, the outline of the law that produced 
it. Plato's definition of law, that it is the discovery of what is, sur- 
passes any thing ever framed, and justifies Bowne in claiming that a 
knowledge of law is a knowledge of the thing it produces and sustains. 
The only real in nature is law; this is the thing-in-itself which Kant 
said is undiscoverable, but it is now made manifest. The Eleatics 
denied the existence of the phenomenal world, but failed to point out 
the underlying reality. The reality of the Eleatics was the ego ; but 
law is the non-ego, or the real of nature. Knowledge of the phe- 
nomenal centers at last in the knowledge of the real that produced it. 

To what extent may the mind know itself? Is self-knowledge a 
possibility? This is a root-question, sinking itself deeper than the 
other. The French Leroux denies the existence of the me or ego, 
and denies that man can know himself in the consciousness. Can he 
know himself at all, then? Does he exist? Locke was driven by 
his empiricism to deny that the mind can know itself, and sensation- 
alism generally espouses this conclusion. Drawing a distinction 
between subject and object, it is asserted by the empirical school that 
the mind can not be both subject and object, or the perceiving and 
the perceived, the knowing and the known. If, however, the mind 
can not know itself, certain it is that mind can not be known, for it 
can only be known by knowing itself. Sir John Davies held to 
man's capability of self-knowledge ; Lord Herbert believed in innate 
ideas, but innate ideas imply self-knowledge, or knowledge of the con- 
tents of the mind. The intuitional spirit is the self-knowing spirit. 
The mind that knows any thing must first know itself, for there must 
be a mind to know before any thing can be known. A knowing mind 
must be a conscious mind ; if conscious, it is conscious of itself be- 
fore it is conscious of any thing else ; so that self-knowledge is first, 

15 



226 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

chronologically. The source of original knowledge is not sensation, 
as some schools affirm, but consciousness. Knowledge postulates con- 
sciousness; that is, self-knowledge precedes sensational knowledge. 
The experience-philosophers reverse the order, and make the former 
the product of the latter. A false philosophy is always disposed to 
torture facts, but facts must govern. Self-knowledge is consciousness 
opening, widening, reporting to itself, is subject and object, an indi- 
visible unity, a stupendous reality. Self-knowledge is real, sensational 
knowledge phenomenal. As in nature the real is back of the phe- 
nomenal and takes the name of law, so in self-knowledge the real is 
back of the sensational, and is located in consciousness, or in being 
itself, postulated by the fact of knowledge. 

The greatest Real is God. Is he knowable? Pushing the phe- 
nomenal far from us, and going out of ourselves, does the soul scent 
the atmosphere of the infinite? Do the shadows of the infinite 
deepen and lengthen toward us as we attempt to approach it ? Surely 
the going toward the highest Real is not an impossible experience. 
Repudiated by Spencer, the approach to a personal Real is in the 
highest degree a possibility, a matter of fact, a fact of experience. 
What is the Real? Let us not deceive ourselves with a jugglery of 
words. The Real, remote from all manifestation, must include the 
essence of power, and wisdom, and the integers of goodness and 
justice. It must mean the first source of all that we see, hear, and 
know. It must suggest a producer, an organizer, a Creator. In a 
correlative sense, the perishable must suggest the imperishable, the 
deformed the beautiful, the formal the artificer, the phenomenal the 
absolutely unphenomenal or the original real. The real must be 
mind, thought, personality, God ; all else is temporary, fugitive, 
deceptive. He is the great Real in the universe, the one source of all 
things, knowable because he is reality. The phenomenal is less 
knowable than reality. God is more knowable than the universe, 
since it fadeth, but he abideth forever. The great, genuine Real is 
God ; the lesser Real is man ; the only phenomenal is the world, its 
reality being hidden in the law by which it is made. Law, 
mind, God — these three are the only reals, but the greatest of 
these is God. 

The subject-matter of knowledge is the history, the functions, the 
prerogatives, the relations, one to another, of the reals; a vast field, 
imperfectly surveyed, slowly conquered. The incompleteness of 
human knowledge is frankly admitted; it has always been incom- 
plete; the conclusion of philosophy is that it will always be 
unsatisfactory. 

This suggests an inquiry into the limitations or boundary lines of 



LA W OF MOVABLE LIMITATIONS. 227 

human knowledge, how far it is possible to go, and what are the 
probabilities of pushing the frontier lines a little beyond their pres- 
ent indications. This involves not so much a critical investigation 
of the subject-matter of knowledge as a critical study of the power 
of the human mind to comprehend such subject-matter ; it requires 
a criticism of the thinking, knowing mind, and not a criticism of the 
subjects to be known. Is the mind under fixed limitations, as the as- 
sociationalists insist, preventing it from a research of all reality? 
The metaphysical theory is that a barrier like a Chinese wall sur- 
rounds the mind, checking its advance ; the vision -of the intellect is 
bounded by a horizon ; and these limitations are fixed, immovable, 
permanent, final. Knowledge is relative, not absolute, according to 
Hamilton ; phenomena, not substance, may be known, according to 
Kant; being, power, mind, God, are forever inscrutable, according 
to Spencer. In contrast to this law of fixed limitations, we shall 
affirm that the mind is under a law of movable limitations, whereby 
its progress, however difficult, is assured, and can never be perma- 
nently impeded. Whatever limitations confront the speculator and 
truth-seeker, they are apparently, but not unchangeably, fixed ; they are 
movable, yielding to persistent advance. If there is a horizon, it 
always recedes as one approaches it. The mind is on the march, is 
incessant in its going, and never stops because it can go no farther. It 
moves by its own impulses, and knows no latitude or longitude. The 
universe is not large enough for its activity. 

Are there any limitations which estop farther advance ? Paul 
writes, " We see through a glass darkly," but we see. The sight is 
obscure, uncertain, but it is sight, certainly. " We know in part," 
he also writes ; but we know. Along this line we may interpret the 
limitations of knowledge, or at least admit vaguely-defined limitations, 
since Paul himself does not name them. Partial but not complete 
knowledge, the apostle affirms, belongs to our present state. We 
will illustrate his meaning. Ordinary sight is sufficient for practical 
life, but it is often embarrassed by limitations, and makes a great 
many mistakes. On the prairie it will decide, unless trained to meas- 
ure distances, that a hill or house is distant not more than five miles, 
when it is fifteen miles away. Respecting magnitude it makes 
failures equally humiliating. Distances, magnitudes, densities, the 
untrained eye can not accurately determine. Some things, too, as 
the gases, as animalcule, enterely elude the searching gaze of the 
eye. We do not quote these facts so much as incidents of a defect- 
ive apparatus, as to show how it is possible to see and know in part, 
and not see and know in whole. We know in part, just as we 
see in part. 



228 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Of the phenomenal world we know not the whole, and it may be 
that it will never be entirely known ; but of this we are not certain. 
As a field of investigation and discovery, it is rich in forms, relations, 
laws, and principles, rewarding the diligent inquirer by opening 
the passage-ways to its mysteries, and declaring its grandeur and pur- 
pose to him who seeks to know it. In his intense search for the 
real, man is continually stumbling over the phenomenal, which is 
full of truth for his guidance and illumination; and so slothful is 
the mind in its present environment, that it has tardily discovered 
the physical facts it most needs to know. For ages the race breathed 
the air without knowing its composition. Oxygen at' last was sighted, 
and has a name. What is true of the air, is true of water, the 
metals, the rocks, the trees, the stars. Even nature invites the 
largest genius and covets the presence of the investigating spirit of 
man. Much remains to be discovered ; the forces and laws of nature 
are still in obscurity ; gases are but feebly understood ; electricity is 
a runaway power that needs to be harnessed, controlled, directed ; all 
the properties of matter have not been divulged. Some properties, 
it is true, may be so exceedingly fine and delicate, so invisible even 
with the aid of the most powerful instruments, and serve such occult 
purposes in the economy of nature, that for ages to come they may 
escape detection, and man, ignorant of them, be subject to accident 
or danger, which he might otherwise avoid. , 

Very few laws are known with absolute certainty. Even Newton 
at one time lost faith in the law of gravitation, which he announced. 
The scientist may discover the fact of a law, but not the law itself. 
Gravitation, as a fact, was known long before it was discovered as a 
law. Magnetism is a fact, but the law of magnetism is another 
thing, and a mystery. The facts of nature are within easy reach ; 
the laws of nature may be beyond immediate grasp. Facts are ac- 
cumulating; laws are the invisible influences that connect the phe- 
nomenal and the real ; verily they are the real in the phenomenal, 
and must be sought out by labor, research, comparison, application. 
What we call principles of science, or the basis of scientific proced- 
ure, the phenomenalists themselves — a class of thinkers who veer 
toward agnosticism — are disposed hesitatingly to use, because of a 
suspicion against their reliability. Prof. Clifford declares that we have 
no right to assume that "the laws of geometery and mechanics are 
exactly and absolutely true, and that they will continue exactly and 
absolutely true forever and ever." This casts suspicion, if not odium, 
on the whole fabric of science, linking phenomenalism to agnosti- 
cism, and giving us for a footing nothing but "sinking sand." 

What, then, can be known? If the principles of science, other- 



DIFFICULTIES TO ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE. 229 

wise the laws of nature, are not fully established, or established be- 
yond the possibility of a doubt; if men are still groping in darkness 
respecting the fundamental principles of the government of nature ; 
and if scientists themselves suspect the reality or integrity of the 
laws they have taught others to respect ; it is evident that man's 
knowledge is ignorance, and the prospect of enlargement is lost in 
the saddening and hopeless limitations of his own anarchy. To this 
dreary conclusion phenomenalism conducts us; but this conclu- 
sion we reject. 

That the present state of knowledge is one of deficiency and 
difficulty, it is freely confessed ; but the main question is, whether the 
deficiency is absolute, and the difficulty insurmountable, or is the dis- 
covery of phenomena, properties, laws a rightful expectancy? The 
ascertainment of law is not an impossibility, and faith in mathe- 
matical principles may be grounded in their absolute correctness, as 
tested in life's history. Forms, properties, laws, as proper subjects of 
inquiry, will be scientifically apprehended more and more, and so 
formulated as to be easily understood. If our knowledge now of 
these things is of a doubtful character, it is proof that man is in the 
transition state between suspicion and certainty ; he is on the way to 
positive revelation and "much assurance." 

If difficulties confront us as we inquire into phenomena, or natu- 
ral facts and conditions, what may we not expect when realities are 
the subject-matter of search ? Of mind itself what is known ? If 
we study matter by its properties, may we study mind by its attri- 
butes? Memory, imagination, judgment, conscience, will, and affec- 
tion belong to mind, as malleability and ductility belong to iron. 
But if behind the properties of matter is the real, so behind the at- 
tributes of mind must be the mind itself, a thought that compels the 
consideration of mind separate from its faculties, which is absurd ; or 
its consideration as a mere aggregate of faculties, which is as objec- 
tionable as the idea that matter is a combination of its properties. 
In psychological inquiry we separate the faculties, and discuss them 
separately ; but in point of fact, the mind must be considered in its 
wholeness, undivided and indivisible. 

The fact of mental operation appeals for solution ; it taxes in- 
genuity to its utmost tension. This is a field for the most persistent 
inquiry, in which superficial methods of study will avail nothing. 
Mental processes, an act of volition or judgment, an effort of the 
imagination, the dictatorial voice of the conscience, the proceeding 
of the memory, the exercises of affection, elude superficial search ; but 
a search profound and prolonged must be made. Self-knowledge, or 
the mind knowing itself, which is something more than consciousness 



230 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

of existence, is an achievement which includes a knowledge of facul- 
ties, their relations and processes, the spirit of reality itself. The 
attainment of such knowledge is not "too high;" it is not beyond 
us. If it has not been acquired by this time, its acquirement belongs 
to the early future, possibly to our own day. 

The great Real, or God, is still a problem. He is infinite, man 
finite. On these premises the unknowableness of God might be 
predicated, but it would be insufficient. Infinite things the finite 
mind may, to some extent, apprehend, as space, time, right, justice, 
purity. An infinite being, or combination of infinite qualities, such 
as spirituality, omniscience, omnipotence, immutability, and eternity, 
the finite being may not completely define, but it is a question if hu- 
man ignorance of God must forever remain as it is. Herbert Spencer 
is emphatic in the belief that the infinite is beyond any anthropo- 
morphic conception, and can not be reduced within our psychological 
limitations ; but if correct in the assumption that the finite can not 
find the infinite, it remains to be proven that the infinite can not re- 
veal himself to the finite. The break-down of the finite is repaired 
by the revelation of the infinite, which religion provides in its book 
of truth. Revelation is not anthropomorphic ; the very idea of reve- 
lation is that it is God showing himself, and not that it is man 
expressing his view of God. Anthropomorphism and revelation are 
antipodal ideas. The revelation of the Real is the sure source of 
knowledge of the Real. As we study matter by its properties, finding 
its reality in law, and the mind by its attributes, locating its reality 
in consciousness, so we study God in the light of his manifested 
attributes, discerning his only reality in spirit, or conscious being. 

"We know in part," but we know all along the lines and in the 
direction of the three-fold realities of law, mind, and spirit, and if 
there are limitations they are not the limitations of the reals, but 
arise from the subjective inabilities and hindrances of the mind itself. 
Like a heroic and advancing army, the mind is pushing on its con- 
quests into the interior of the enemy's country, assailing the castles 
of ignorance, and really threatening to invade the realms of the in- 
finite. Surely it is extending its base-line toward the summit, and 
will some time shout the word of triumph from the apparently inac- 
cessible heights of celestial knowledge. 

In this faith we announce that the mind in its struggles after 
truth will finally demonstrate its power to remove all limitations to 
advance, and will compass all knowledge. Acting for a time under 
the law of movable limitations, it will finally act as if under a law 
of removable limitations, breaking down all barriers, and contented 



LA W OF REMO VABLE LIMIT A TIONS. 231 

with its knowledge of truth. The law of movable limitations is in 
harmony with the history of the race ; the law of removable limitations 
may be judged a mere speculation, but it is the real law of progress, 
it is the law of mind, of God, and is the opposite of the philosophy 
of ignorance. It implies that the boundaries of knowledge are in- 
finite; that is, there are no boundaries; the universe of thought, 
being, substance, personality, reality, is knowable, and if knowable 
the mind is not piratical in seizing it. The soul that keeps house in 
the universe of God must at last be at home anywhere in it, with a 
right to all that it seeks and finds, with a freedom that no hindrance can 
disturb. Under such a law ignorance is contraband in the universe, 
and has no sure abiding-place. 

With these two laws before us, we see the mind in two aspects: 
first, the mind as it is, crippled but pressing on ; second, the mind as 
it must be, unembarrassed by limitation. Respecting its limitations, 
we see them, first moved, second removed. This is infinite progress 
in knowledge. In keeping with these laws we may classify the mind, 
and designate the contents of knowledge. There is the spatial, or 
longitudinal mind, which is bounded by space and time, and affected 
in its activities by their contents. Within these boundaries it moves, 
driving back the limitations of knowledge with its own advancement, and 
acquiring a familiarity with things beyond, by which it is lured on- 
ward. It unmasks nature, it tears the bandage from its own eyes, it 
walks, it flies, it seeks, it finds; but it flies with broken wing, and 
seeks the truth only at short range. The spatial mind is the walled 
mind. Then there is the ecumenical mind, which, acting in harmony 
with the law of removable limitations, smiles at the toyish boundaries 
of space and time, overleaps all barriers in its aspirations, is allo- 
pathic and universal in its conquests. The elasticity of mind has 
been admitted, but it has been supposed to be like a bow, which 
would bend only so far without breaking ; but the ecumenical mind 
is mobile, divinely tempered, avaricious of knowledge, runs the 
blockade of phenomena, and sails into the ports of universal truth. 
It is exceedingly familiar with some truths, and has a bowing ac- 
quaintance with all. Fitche said the non-ego is a hindrance to the 
ego ; it is a temporary hindrance to the spatial mind ; to the ecumen- 
ical mind limitations are invisible, unknown. Modern philosophy 
deals with the spatial mind, fixing unalterably its limitations ; a true 
philosophy must accept the law of removable limitations, under which 
the mind becomes ecumenical. 

The conquest of truth, hitherto interrupted by the sloth, the pas- 
sions, the natural blindness of man, is under the operation of the law 



232 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY, 

of illimitable progress, an admitted possibility, and will eventuate in 
glorious certainty. God is better known to-day than at any time in 
the past ; man is slowly resolving his own mysteries ; nature is yield- 
ing her secrets, disclosing her laws, and revealing origin and destiny. 
The excavation of hidden truth, the solution of trigonometrical prob- 
lems, the dissolution of metaphysical nebulae, must go on until the 
mind is satisfied with its achievements, and glories as an acknowledged 
monarch in the vastness of its kingdom. Hamilton admitted, in the 
following declaration, that both the ego and the non-ego are know- 
able: "We may therefore lay it down as an undisputed truth, that 
consciousness gives, as an ultimate fact, a primitive duality — a knowl- 
edge of the ego in relation and contrast to the non-ego, and a 
knowledge of the non-ego in relation and contrast to the ego." This, 
though contradicted afterwards by Hamilton's assertion of the law of 
relativity, is, to our thinking, an exact, but perhaps not final, state- 
ment of possible intellectual attainment ; the ego is self-knowing ; it 
knows the non-ego; it knows God. 

The extension of knowledge in the direction of absolute realities 
implies an improvement in the methods of research, a revisal of ex- 
isting methods of reasoning, and the adoption of short-cut processes to 
realities. It may be that the syllogistic methods of Aristotle, the Ba- 
conian system of induction, and the Kantian antinomies should be 
accepted as final, and that an entirely new method of inquiry, in 
which the old style of reasoning will be incidental, or at the most only 
auxiliary, can not be devised ; but certain it is that the highest truth 
can not be ascertained, or the instrument of inquiry is faulty and in- 
sufficient. Considering the sources of knowledge, we affirm that a 
knowledge of truth is attainable; truth exists only to be known, and 
if not known, the method of introduction and acquaintance is at fault. 
Perhaps the old methods, seemingly inadequate and certainly insuffi- 
cient, may not be rudely set aside, but be incorporated with more 
efficient methods of inquiry, occupying subordinate but useful rela- 
tions to the highest results. No one method is at present supreme. 
Neither induction nor deduction, neither the a priori nor the a poste- 
riori method, is complete in itself. Each is wanting in something to 
make its last word infallible. The scientific method of inquiry, em- 
bracing the four steps of observation, analysis, classification, and con- 
clusion has flooded the world with inharmonious theories, and arrayed 
science against itself. Touching geological questions, the age of the 
world in particular, the scientific method has been singularly fruitful 
of contradictory results, and especially prolific of error when applied 
to religious truth, showing the necessity of a revisal of the method. 



STUMBLING-BLOCKS TO PROGRESS. 233 

Metaphysical theologians not a few have conceded that the demon- 
stration of the existence of God by the a priori method is impossible, 
while the materialists ridicule the a posteriori method when applied in 
defense of the theistic idea. The assault on these various methods 
by different thinkers, and the unsatisfactory results obtained, justify 
the belief that a new method, retaining the excellences, but relieved 
of the deficiencies of the old, by which the gateway to truth will be 
opened, will some time appear. 

The greatest stumbling-block to intellectual progress is perhaps 
Kant's "antinomies;" that is, if the mind, in its struggles, is bound 
by these contradictions, as laid down by the German philosopher, 
there can be no progress. His first antinomy admits and denies a 
" beginning ;" his second antinomy assumes and rejects simplicity of 
origin ; his third antinomy joins freedom and necessity in the mind's 
deliberations; his fourth antinomy accepts and rejects the idea of 
a necessary being, or cause of all things. How can the mind ascend 
under such a load of contradictions ? Yet philosophy stands in awe 
of this Kantian environment, refusing to proceed beyond it, and suc- 
cumbing to the adversity of ignorance within its bounds. Evidently, 
escape from the environment is the next duty of the mind ; freedom 
from the reign of the " insoluble contradictions" must be the cry of a 
true philosophy. 

The weaknesses of the present methods of reasoning is that in 
many respects they are artificial, the framework of metaphysicians, 
who, instead of discovering from the mind itself the method of its ac- 
tivity, have invented a method and imposed it upon the mind. 
Reasoning must be conducted according to reason ; reflecting must be 
governed by the reflective faculty ; the mind must make its own 
method. Discoverers, not inventors, are in demand. 

New methods, freedom from embarrassments, persistence in claim- 
ing the possibility of acquaintance with all truth, a rejection of the 
philosophy of ignorance, must characterize the attempts of the human 
mind in the future, if its progress toward reality be real itself. 

Aristotle, Bacon, Kant — who next? 



234 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE LAW OK CAUSALITY; OR EFFICIENT CAUSE. 

IN the early morning an Arab saw the foot-print of a camel near his 
tent-door. It made no impression upon him, because he was not 
unacquainted with the quadruped that made it ; but the stranger whom 
he lodged was all-anxious to see the camel. Empiricism studies the 
foot-print, and is unaroused from its monotonous stupidity ; philosophy 
ought to flame with a desire to find the camel. Empirical psycholo- 
gists, evolutionists, associationalists, all heroically assert that there is 
no camel ; the foot-print made itself; it evolved from prior conditions of 
soil and climate ; or, if a camel is conceded, he is pronounced altogether 
unknowable. 

We have chosen to present a great philosophical principle in this 
fable form, in order to bring it out in its clearness, and to fasten the 
mind upon the differences that subsist between being and non-being, 
or between cause, as an originating influence, and effect, as its legiti- 
mate result. 

Is there a dividing line between cause and effect ? Is there a dif- 
ference between phenomena and noumena ? Either phenomena must 
explain themselves — that is, possess the principle of reality, and 
stand as self-existences — or they must be referred to some external 
principle competent to produce them. The choice is between the 
foot-print and the camel. It is pleasant to sojourn in the region of 
phenomena ; it is not easy to climb rays of light, or go toward the sun 
with opened eyes. But the philosopher's vocation compels him to go 
back of phenomena to sources, back of effects to causes ; and he is not 
a philosopher who does not strive to do it. If unsuccessful in his 
search, he can console himself with the reflection that he attempted to 
break through the network of phenomena, or scale its bold heights, 
but was unable to do so. 

The problem of efficient cause has a bearing on the fundamental 
questions of philosophy and religion ; hence its importance, and the 
demand for careful investigation. The discussion of the problem we 
shall conduct under the following heads : 1. The Basis of the Law ; 
2. The Spirit of the Law ; 3. Objections to the Law ; 4. Value 
of the Law. 

If the doctrine of efficient cause can stand upon its own merits — 
that is, if it can be separated from other " causes," and be viewed 



SECOND AR Y CA USES ELIMINA TED. 235 

independently — its basis will be made manifest, and its vindication 
will be supreme. Philosophy can not be charged with a spirit of 
simplicity, either in the distinctions it makes, the terms it employs, 
or the systems it constructs. So great sometimes are the systems it 
builds — for example, Hegel's and Kant's — that one wearies in trying 
to remember them, and often loses sight of the main issue in 
the superabundant dress with which they are clothed. The doctrine of 
causation has suffered from philosophical padding until it has stag- 
gered with its load. The generic idea of cause, simple enough in 
itself, has been expanded with the aid of refined distinctions into four 
different kinds of causes, only one of which is essentially a cause. 
Would one sweep them out of the circle of investigation, as a servant 
does the cobwebs from the ceiling, the voice of criticism would be 
heard ; but the problem would be simplified, and the task of solution 
relieved of embarrassment. Newton advises against the multiplication 
of causes without necessity. 

Plato, in the Statesman, distinguishes between "co-causes" and 
" causes" as follows : " Such arts as do not fabricate the thing itself, 
but prepare instruments for the fabricating (arts), without the pres- 
ence of which the proposed work could not be effected by each of the 
arts, these are co-causes ; but those which fabricate the thing itself 
are causes." Co-causes are secondary causes ; but the efficient cause 
is that which produces the thing itself ; it stands to the result in the 
relation of a creative power. 

Neither Aristotle's famous four-fold division of causes nor Plato's 
"co-causes," nor any secondary causes, belong to a study of the cre- 
ating or originating cause of things. Separating the latter from all 
other causes, however related they may be to it, its basis can the 
more clearly be ascertained. The basis of the law — that is, its existence — 
may be predicated by either the a priori or the a posteriori method ; 
but the a priori method is little less than an assumption. To reason 
from cause to effect is possible only by assuming the cause, unless the 
existence of cause can be demonstrated without any reference to 
effect, but effect is involved in cause. The idea of cause is implicit 
with the idea of effect, and neither can be considered as if the other 
did not exist. The a priori method, therefore, involves an assumption. 

To reason from effect to cause requires no assumption whatever. 
Effect is a fact, and is not in dispute ; cause is in dispute. To en- 
force the doctrine of causation by first assuming it is not the truest 
way of defending or defining it. The basis of the law of causality is 
in the a posteriori method of reason. Given an effect, the first in- 
quiry relates to what produced it. "We pick up a round pebble 
from the beach," says Balfour Stewart, "and at once acknowledge 



236 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

there has been some physical cause for the shape into which it has 
been worn." The color of a leaf, the sides of a crystal, the fins of a 
fish, the velocity of the wind, the approach of the seasons, are sug- 
gestive of cause. The inquiry raised is usually simple, not complex, 
and the answer expected is not complex, but simple. The cause, not 
causes, we seek to know. Examination and reflection may lead to 
the consideration of co-causes, but the mind's first inquiry is for a 
single cause. The basis of the law is in the intuitional structure 
of the mind, acting in the a posteriori manner for the ascertainment 
of truth. There is nothing stronger than an intuitional law or truth. 
Gravitation is not an intuitional law ; it must first be observed, then 
verified by experiment. Intuitional laws or truths require no inde- 
pendent verification. The criteria by which they may be determined 
are as follows : 1. Self-evidence ; 2. Logical priority ; 3. Universality ; 
4. Necessity. 

By these criteria, the law of causality, or its basis in rational 
intuition, may be discovered. A noise is heard in Indianapolis at six 
o'clock every morning. A stranger will inquire the cause. A sav- 
age, an Egyptian, a Chinaman, if in the city, will make the same 
inquiry. The great cannon at the arsenal is fired at that hour, and 
the whole city hears it. The stranger's inquiry for the cause is based 
upon the following conditions : it is self-evident that there is a cause ; 
the idea of cause antedates every thing else; his inquiry is the inquiry 
of all who hear it for the first time, and is in a sense universal; and 
he finds it absolutely necessary to make it. The idea of cause is an 
intuitional idea. It finds expression, therefore, in all languages, it is 
the underthought of all science, it is the leading factor in all history, 
and the essential element in all religion. 

When Mill attributes the idea to the habit of "association," he 
makes no explanation of it at all ; for it may be asked, whence the habit 
of associating a cause with an effect, if there is no absolute connection 
or relation between them ? Comte denies that cause may be known ; 
but the denial is compatible with a faith in the existence of the prin- 
ciple of causation. One may not know cause, but believe in cause. 
That is a narrow view of universal history which limits the interpre- 
tation of the order of things to a mere succession, which reduce* 
natural phenomena to a series of antecedents and consequents without 
any known connection, which denies a nexus between historic events, 
and emphasizes the visible progress of the ages as an accidental and 
undesigned order. "We think things," says Kant, "in the relation 
of cause and effect ;" we can not think otherwise. The idea of mere 
succession in nature and history is objectionable, because it contains 
not the key to an explanation of things; it can not even explain 



BASIS OF EFFICIENT CAUSE, 237 

itself. If nature or history is a succession of events without causal 
order, there will be some difficulty in tracing the succession ; but even 
allowing succession and that it can be traced, the tracer, going back, 
will finally reach a time when there was a first event. A first event 
in the line of succession is inevitable. No difference what it was, it 
occurred; and, occurring, the mind comes forward with its demand 
for explanation. Admit that both nature and history are successions, 
from which the causal order and the law of causality have disappeared, 
the beginning of nature and history was not a succession. There was 
an antecedent that did not follow a consequent, but there never was 
a consequent that did not follow an antecedent. Whence the first 
antecedent? 

Advocates of succession are embarrassed by a dilemma, as difficult 
of solution as any thing presented in philosophy. Dr. Carpenter in- 
sists that scientists confine themselves to the order of nature, and the- 
ologians study the cause of nature. This is a division of labor which, 
observed by both parties, will result in the discovery of both the or- 
der and the cause of nature. Order and cause are two things. Mill, 
Hume, and others have reduced the order to succession, but this is 
unsatisfactory ; and theologians, not a few, have assumed the cause, 
which is equally unsatisfactory. 

The mind demands a cause ; its rational activities are grounded in 
the principle of cause, and can be explained on no other principle. 
The idea of cause is a rational intuition ; it may be urged as a religious 
precept and a philosophical principle, but its foundations are in the 
consciousness, or the rational exercise of mind. An inquiry may be 
raised at this point. Will a phenomenon father its cause? Will an 
event point unerringly to the particular influence that produced it? 
What causes dew, frost, hail, snow, rain? Intuitionally, we decide 
at once, as the snow falls, as the rain pours, that it has been 
caused ; the idea of cause is irresistible ; but what the cause is, 
the intuitions do not decide. There is need, therefore, of other 
faculties, or the exercise of other mental powers. Reason now 
exerts itself to find out the particular cause, but is inactive until 
the intuitions first suggest that there is a cause. Intuition originates 
the thought of cause ; reason seeks to know the cause. The basis 
of efficient cause is, first, intuitional, and second, rational. We go 
one step farther, and affirm that the law of causation has a relia- 
ble basis in experience. Hume opposed miracles on the ground, 
as he alleged, that they were contrary to experience. In his judg- 
ment, experience is a standard or the ultimate test of the reality of a 
thing. Unwilling to concede so much, for it savors of sensationalism, 
we are quite willing to submit the law under consideration to so severe 



238 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

a test. For, if it is contrary to universal experience that effects are 
caused — in other words, if events occur without being caused — it will 
be difficult to convince men of the operation of the law of causation 
in nature, or win their faith in it as a principle. If required to point 
out the nexus between an effect and its cause, in order to establish 
faith in the connecting link, it can be done in cases without number ; 
but no argument can be made against it in cases in which the nexus 
is concealed, for many of the processes of nature are hidden and can 
not be announced. To conclude that, since a process is hidden, there 
is no process, is as reasonable as to conclude that, since the nexus is 
unknown, there is no connection. So far as experience is worth any 
thing, it establishes that an effect without a cause is impossible. The 
savage recognizes this principle; a scientist is necessary to explain it. 
But it is the fact of the principle, and not its explanation, that must 
first be ascertained. The proof of the principle is in the mind's 
structure and the necessities of thought, or in the intuitions, the 
reason, and experience. 

Accepting the law of causality as established, we inquire more 
particularly now into the content of the law itself, or the processes 
of its exhibition both in nature and history. With Dr. McCosh's 
definition of cause we can not express unqualified satisfaction. 
' 'Cause," he says, "consists in the mutual action of two or more 
bodies ; that is, their action on each other." This is a limitation of 
the arena of cause to physical existences, precluding the operation of 
cause outside of the physical realm, and preventing it where one body 
only exists. This limitation is not warranted by the facts. It is 
true, we deal with cause as we see it in the natural universe, but it is 
not true that the idea of cause involves " mutual action," or a " duality 
or plurality in causation." If two bodies must exist before cause can 
operate, if the two must influence each other before an effect is pos- 
sible, one body is powerless to do any thing in an independent way, 
or by virtue of its laws. To admit this is to pluck up the law to its 
very roots. The idea of causation is not mutual action, but single, in- 
dependent action. Regarding causation as the primary law of creation, 
or as the underlying principle of cosmical order, it implies God's inde- 
pendent action. Creation was not the "mutual action" of God and 
matter, but the single, independent action of God. If the root-idea 
of causality is opposed to the idea of " mutual action," its application 
throughout nature must be grounded in the single, independent action 
of cause. Mutual action of bodies and forces may subsequently occur, 
but it is co-operation, it is combination ; it is not causation. 

With Herbart's conclusion, that every action is due to several 
causes, we can not agree, since it involves the idea of plurality in 



MA TERIALISTIC INTERPRET A TION OF CA USA TION. 239 

causation, whereas the idea of causation is simple, and the root of 
causation is single and independent in creative power. The expres- 
sion of the principle of cause in the universe, or just how the law of 
causality maintains itself in the phenomenal world, is a problem over 
which the strongest minds have pondered with enthusiasm and 
anxiety. While various explanations of its activity have been 
framed, they may be reduced to two general propositions, each in 
content opposed to the other, and each advocated by brilliant and 
distinguished thinkers: 1. Materialism, atheism, pantheism, and evo- 
lution virtually subscribe to the same interpretation, in that they 
more or less eliminate the divine presence from the universe, assum- 
ing that it is self-acting, self-centered, and self-sufficient. 2. Theism 
asserts divine control, and insists upon the divine presence in the 
universe. Whatever form the interpretation takes, it is the old 
question, Is God in the world? 

Prof. Tyndall affirms that matter received at the time of its formal 
organization a quantum of energy sufficient for its purpose until the 
end; hence, there is no need of divine supervision. Prof. Huxley 
regards force as a manifestation of something unknown, but which he 
suspects is a material phase of the Deity ; but Deity is only present 
through force. Cudworth suggested the existence of a plastic nature, 
on which the Creator works, by which to sustain the phenomenal 
world. Dr. Laycock attributes to nature an organizing intelligence. 
These represent the different phases of the materialistic conception of 
the universe in its sustained forms and activities. They are consistent 
with a theistic conception of the origin of the universe, but in run- 
ning it on independent principles, or by self-guiding forces, an athe- 
istic world is the result. It now runs itself. The laws, forces, 
forms, and activities imparted to it in its atomic state are sufficient to 
preserve, guide, and develop it. The world retains the impelling 
cause or force communicated to it in the beginning. It is as if one 
would say that a top, being set in motion, would acquire and retain 
the impelling motion forever. 

Theism, both scientific and Christian, introduces the divine pres- 
ence everywhere. Lotze represents the scientific side, Dr. B. F. 
Cocker the Christian idea. Causation is the direct manifestation of the 
divine will in phenomena. God is everywhere present, and in every 
thing. He personally supervises all things, small and great, in 
the universe. Force is the energizing spirit of God. He is in na- 
ture, not outside. He is in law ; he is law. Joseph Cook, expound- 
ing this idea and subscribing to the doctrine of divine immanence, 
says : " We talk of matter as if it were a hand, and not a glove with 
a hand in it. So far as matter is inert, it is glove only. This glove 



240 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

may be taken off; the supersensible reality at the core of it — the 
spirit — is God, and is indestructible." Even more explicitly does he 
express himself: " In a better age science, lighting her lamps at that 
higher unity, will teach that although he whom we dare not name 
transcends all natural laws, they — the natural laws — are through his 
immanenee literally God." Dr. Cocker glories in the thought of the 
divine immanence, supporting it on Scriptural grounds, and is as con- 
clusive as Joseph Cook and Lotze in. the use of the scientific method. 

The danger of the doctrine of the Divine Immanence is its pan- 
theistic complexion, which, however, is guarded against by the ac- 
companying doctrine of the Divine Transcendency. God is in nature, 
but above it. He dwells in the universe, but is superior to it, pre- 
serving, guiding, and developing it. He not only authorizes phenom- 
ena, but he produces them. He is the causal spirit in the universe. 
He not only originated the universe, but he also sustains it. He is 
not only the First Cause, but also the present Cause. He is Cause. 
To this conclusion both science and religion must come. God is not 
an outsider or spectator of his works. He is in his works, and yet 
different from them. One of his ancient names was " mover ;" he is 
the mover, the originator, of all changes, of all activities. Believing 
in the principle of cause, it has its embodiment in personality, mani- 
festing himself in law and phenomena. 

The objections to the law of causality must receive attention. In 
these pages we seek the truth, and if belief in the law is a result of 
education, or if it have no foundation in fact, it is well to know it. 
If valid objections can be raised to the principle, they ought to be 
candidly reviewed. Alexander Bain declares the doctrine of efficient 
cause unimportant ; but if this is true, we are at a loss to know what 
is important. The doctrine implies a going to the root of things, just 
what he has been trying to do by the materialistic route, but without 
success. It can only be unimportant in the sense that some other doc- 
trine is more important ; practically, the social and moral questions 
of life may be more important ; metaphysically, it is the only impor- 
tant question — there is no other question. The correct interpretation 
of the law of causality includes the correct interpretation of God and 
the universe. 

The standing objection of Hume, Mill, and Comte, that the phe- 
nomena of causation, or the phenomena of succession, may be recalled 
for examination. The constancy of succession, or the uniformity of 
like results from like conditions or causes, has been overlooked by the 
objectors. Why is there never a break in the royal line of succes- 
sion ? Certain effects always follow certain so-called causes. Why no 
disturbance of this fact if there is no connection between antecedent 



OBJECTIONS TO CAUSATION. 241 

and consequent ? The uniformity of result demonstrates the existence 
of law, for law is the expression of uniformity. 

One might venture to ask, What is meant by succession ? Hume 
could only mean antecedent and consequent, without relations ; for 
the admission of relations is implicit with order, and order is implicit 
with law, and law is implicit with intelligence. But materialistic 
philosophy points with pride to the law of relativity, by which it 
hopes to demolish the idea of the Absolute and Unconditioned ; 
hence the idea of antecedent and consequent without relations is phil- 
osophically absurd. So soon, however, as the idea of relation is in- 
troduced, the idea of order, implying the reign of law, imperatively 
appears, and this compels recognition of causality as a principle in 
nature. Succession is involved in causation. Without a regular, 
uniform succession the theory of causation can not be maintained; 
without causation , succession is impossible ; for the process of things 
would be irregular, if there was any process at all. Succession is the 
proof of causation, and causation the raison d'etre of succession. 

It has been supposed that causation is a word that refers to a mere 
coincidence of events, and can not rightly be applied to an established 
order ; that is, since certain results have happened when certain contem- 
poraneous influences were recognized, it has been inferred that the two 
were in inviolable association, from which the law of causality has 
been framed. For example, Sirius, or the dog-star, was observed to 
appear when the Nile began to rise, and the Egyptians surmised that 
the star caused the river to swell and overflow. This is the theory of 
coincidence. Coincidence and causation are as different as time and 
gravitation. Coincidence may occur without any connection or rela- 
tion whatever between the facts ; it can not in any sense belong to 
the category of cause. Coincidence is a sham ; like the rebels at 
Manasseh hoisting the Union flag, it appears in the camp of causation, 
and attempts to capture it. It is a rebel against the truth. 

It has been pointed out that what is called Cause is only another 
word for effect ; that is, nature is a circle of forces or influences, each 
of which is the effect of something preceding, and becomes in turn 
the agency of something following. Natural phenomena are the 
products of an endless repetition of forces, interchanging as causes and 
effects, whose scientific classification is resorted to for the better under- 
standing of nature. No denial is made that nature's programme appears 
like a rotation of causes and effects ; but since a cause becomes an 
effect, and an effect a cause, the law of causation is not imperiled, 
but the rather established. The repetition of causes points to the in- 
fluence of the principle, and the conversion of effect into causes is 
proof that it is in power. That a cause becomes an effect is proof that 

16 



242 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

as cause it has served its purpose ; it does not show that cause did not 
exist. The classification of causes and effects is in accordance with the 
facts of nature, and therefore not imaginary. 

Against the association of personality with causation, the doctrine of 
the equivalence of effects and their causes has been urged ; but the 
doctrine itself is still in dispute. In a certain sense every cause must be 
equal to its effect, and the total of causes concerned in the origin of the 
universe must be equal to the phenomena of the universe. If these 
causes are sufficient for effects, there is no room, as there is no neces- 
sity, for personal agency, and cause is left as a self-managing some- 
thing, without personal form or spirit. This not only empties it of 
power, but reduces it to a shadow that can not be traced. In the 
scientific sense, causes and effects are not equal ; but science is slow to 
learn this great truth. If the doctrine of the equivalence of cause and 
effect can be maintained, then, indeed, there is no need of going out- 
side of a particular cause for a particular effect. But effects sometimes 
far transcend the cause. In many cases there is a great disproportion 
between causes and effects, for, as saith the Scripture, "Behold, how 
great a matter a little fire kindleth." Hermann Lotze, admitting that 
the idea of the equality of causes and effects obtains in philosophy, pro- 
nounces it an error, and explains its origin in loose conceptions. " It 
would in itself be an inexactness to try to establish an equation between 
the ' cause,' which is a thing, and the effect, which is a state or an 
occurrence," says the German metaphysician. He denies that the 
" effect must be the precise counterpart of its cause," and sees no 
ground for identifying in kind and degree the cause with its effect. 
To insist on identity, resemblance, or equality between cause and effect 
is philosophically absurd, according to Lotze. The idea of causation 
implies divine sovereignity, or a supervision of forces for the produc- 
tion of given ends ; and this may require the combination of forces or 
causes, so that the smallest fact in nature may be the result of a num- 
ber of forces or causes in operation. In this sense there is " duality 
or plurality in causation ;" but plurality is possible only because there 
is personality behind it. 

Mr. Mill, speaking of the seventy chemical elements, observes that 
they exhibit no evidence of being effects ; there is nothing in them to 
prove that they were created, and if they were not created, the uni- 
verse of which they are composed was not created. Such a statement 
must have been projected for the purpose of compelling the believer 
in causality to declare what constitutes an effect, for if one is ignorant 
of the nature or evidence of an effect, one can not found an a posteriori 
argument for Cause. The proof that oxygen is an effect, he thinks, 
is wanting. Is this because of its simplicity ? Is it a simple element ? 



OXYGEN AN EFFECT. 243 

Until it is fully demonstrated that the primary elements are not com- 
plex in constitution, it can not be affirmed that they have not the 
appearance of effects. 

Granting, however, that the primary elements are simple, it is as 
inconceivable that they were produced without cause as that the uni- 
verse itself was uncaused. This means the eternity of the elements, 
if it means any thing. But if the elements have existed eternally, 
there was a period when they were organized into worlds, and organ- 
ization required the intervention of Cause. Even in this aspect of 
the case the idea of Cause is not eliminated from the history of the 
universe, for if Cause was not involved in the existence of atoms or 
elements, it was involved in the organization of the universe. 

The eternity of the elements is a serious inference if the facts 
justify it, and a brazen assumption if they do not. The statement 
that an element does not appear to be an effect suggests a question 
or two. What is an effect ? That which is produced by a cause, says 
Webster. This definition does not meet the present emergency, for 
as yet it is not certain that there are any effects. An effect, in order 
to establish the fact that it is an effect, must contain the proof of it in 
its own nature, as in its functions, or adaptations, or possibilities ; 
there must be something in it which goes to show that it was pro- 
duced. Take oxygen. What can be said of it in proof that it is an 
effect? In its original state it is a gas, but it is generally diffused, 
entering into combination with the solid earth, and constitutes about 
one-half of the entire mass. In its aeriform condition it is capable 
of almost illimitable expansion, and remains unchanged, no difference 
how great the temperature or pressure applied to it. Prof. Cooke 
affirms that "twenty tons of pressure on a square inch are not suffi- 
cient to reduce oxygen to a liquid condition." . Recently, however, it 
has been reduced to a liquid. It maintains its identity, whether as 
gas or liquid. Then oxygen is the well-known supporter of combus- 
tion, and indispensable to life. Without analyzing the element, or 
considering its character further, it is clear that in its expansive ten- 
dency, in its ability to combine with all other materials, in its self- 
preservation, and its relation to combustion, it sustains its reputation 
as the most useful element in the economy of nature, and bears the 
image of an effect. Go through the list of primary elements, analyz- 
ing each and all, and the same coDclusion will be reached ; they are 
effects ; they contain the proofs in themselves of having been pro- 
duced. To deny the appearance of effect to the elements is a 
stepping-stone to a denial of effect in the universe, which means the 
banishment of Cause. As the first step can not be taken, so the 
second is improbable. The fact of Cause still remains. 



244 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

The admission of the law of causality in the realm of nature is 
fatal to the mechanical hypothesis of the origin and development of 
nature; on this account materialism denies its existence. The law 
presupposes the presence of a superintending mind, which the ma- 
terialist feigns not to discover anywhere. To oppose the doctrine of 
causation because it hypothecates the doctrine of the divine existence 
is proof that prejudice is the substance of the opposition. The law 
is not urged in these pages with reference to a theological tenet, but 
solely because it is a self-evidencing primary law of nature, the fun- 
damental content of which appears to be the divine presence. The 
philosophy of the law is one thing, the theology of the law quite 
another; but it is true that, given its philosophy, its theological 
bearing manifests itself. For this, however, no one is responsible, the 
law itself predicating a divine idea. 

The law of causality is a stumbling-block of no mean magnitude 
in the path of the fatalists ; heuce, one pronounces it unimportant ; 
another reduces phenomenal order to an unconnected succession; 
another affirms that cause is entirely unknowable. All sorts of defi- 
nitions, explanations, guesses, and theories, have been proposed to 
escape the alternative of theism or atheism, but the issue is plainly 
along this line. The fact of causal order is a demonstration in itself 
of the Infinite ; hence, it must be impeached, and the absurdity of 
an uncaused universe reiterated until philosophy will wonder if it 
may not possibly be true. The animus of the assault on the law of 
causality is its inherent support of the theistic hypothesis. 

This prepares the way for a brief consideration of the doctrine 
of efficient cause in its relation to general truth. By virtue of the 
causal idea the world appears as the product of law, and exists under 
and is sustained by law. Science has strained itself to establish that 
nature is under the dominion of law; but it must be understood that 
law is universal, because the principle of causation is supreme. 
Causation is law — the first law. Law is the content of superintend- 
ing wisdom, and nature is its theater or receptacle. Every thing, even 
the wind that blows, is under the surveillance of law, as the Signal 
Service Bureau of the United States has ascertained. But law, or 
the expression of order in nature, is impossible except as the princi- 
ple of causation underlies and precedes it. Causation is the explana- 
tion of universal law. 

The doctrine of efficient cause is the key to the highest philosophy. 
In order that the mind's activities may be reliable, it must be gov- 
erned by certain primary principles, of whose existence there is no 
dispute. The astronomer does not halt in his calculation to consider 
or prove that a circle involves three hundred and sixty degrees. If 



RELATION OF EFFICIENT TO FINAL CAUSE. 245 

he can not rely on this conclusion, he can not be certain of the truth 
of any calculation. In geometry there are a multitude of axioms 
the truth of which is not contingent on repeated demonstration ; they 
must be accepted, or the mathematician can not proceed. Likewise 
in philosophy there must be axiomatic truths requiring no further 
elucidation, if philosophical inquiry can proceed. Among the axioms 
of the highest philsophy is this of efficient cause. Without it, there 
is neither starting-point nor landing-place. Materialists have floated 
in a sea of doubt, because they started from nowhere and were mak- 
ing for no headland. The best cure for a false philosophy is the orthodox 
doctrine of cause. Schopenhauer and Hartmann accepted the doctrine, 
but, stripping it of personal features, and resolving it into impersonal 
force, or an unconscious activity, they sunk it to the level of a phys- 
ical agency, and pessimism was the result. One may assent to a law 
of causality, and be fatalistic; if he ascertain the law of causation, he 
becomes theistic. 

It is patent to him who reads that the doctrine of efficient cause 
justifies faith in the doctrine of final cause ; in other words, the two 
causes are related like two brothers. They rise and fall together. A 
final cause, as we shall hereafter show, is often the key to an efficient 
cause ; and an efficient cause, as we now declare, is often a key to a 
final cause. If the principle of design is existent in nature, it must 
be the fruit of the principle of efficiency in nature. Design carried 
out implies previous executing force. Teleology is one of the paths 
to the law of causation. If effect is proof of cause, design is proof 
of efficiency. The two links are inseparable, and opposition to one 
is opposition to the other. Hostility to the law of causation means a 
broad attack on all the "causes" in philosophy — a shipwreck of effi- 
cient means the shipwreck of final cause. 

The value of the doctrine of causation will appreciate as its re- 
lation to the theory of development is disclosed. Not disputing 
that the natural universe is a gradual development from germinal or 
atomic forms, through manifold stages, into final and fixed forms, it 
is difficult to understand the system of development which it exhibits 
without the pre-supposition of the causative principle. If nature's 
development is a system of development, it implies causal order ; if it 
is not a system of development, it is a question if there has been 
any development. Development signifies system ; system is pregnant 
with law ; law is the sign of Cause. Dr. McCosh represents develop- 
ment as organized causation, a strong putting of the truth. * Any de- 
velopment without directing cause, or independent of law, would be 
the development of irregularity ; but it is agreed that nature is a regular 
development of order, beauty, adaptation, proportion, and utility, 



246 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

which can not be accounted for in the absence of the causative spirit. 
Thus the scientific theory of development, if true, is a corroboration 
of the law of causality. 

The doctrine has its practical features. We sometimes speak of 
the stability of nature or of the universe, meaning that the natural 
order of phenomena will continue without a probability of disorder 
or wreck. Business, commerce, navigation, travel, manufacturing 
and agricultural interests, are conducted without much anxiety, so 
far as nature's order is involved in these interests. We expect no 
change of law. The seasons will come and go as in the past, the 
laws of atmospheric phenomena will abide, chemical principles may 
be trusted to-morrow as they were yesterday, and mathematical truths 
will not deceive. The stability of the universe is insured through 
the presence of the principle of Cause, which, establishing nature's 
order as the best, will perpetuate it until its mission is accomplished. 

In the truest sense the principle is the foundation-stone of the 
truest religion. The greatest question of religion is that of a personal 
God. The mind readily espouses the idea of a Supreme Power ; but 
to apprehend the Power as a personal being, to understand his char- 
acter, to formulate his dispositions, to catalogue his attributes, and 
express his relations to all things, involves the highest thought ; it is, 
indeed, impossible to the highest human thought. Philosophers from 
the time of Thales until now have agonized over the problem of the 
supreme power; they have sought to know if there is a personal 
being, endowed with infinite faculties, or if Force inherent in matter 
constitutes the sum of infinite cause, or if there is a principle of life 
impacting nature, yet derived from an underived source, too remote 
for human discovery. At this point the law of causality affords not 
a little relief. Either the universe created itself, or it was created ; 
but as the idea of a self-made universe is absurd, the other idea of 
creation may be maintained on the Platonic dialectic of refutation or 
contradiction. Creation once admitted involves the truth of the 
causative principle. Mysterious it is, but it is not absurd. Causa- 
tion points to the First Cause. All causes, mediate and immediate, 
become multiples of the First Cause. 

If causation points to an absolute Cause, it is a safe principle on 
which to build a religion. It goes back to original power. Causa- 
tion is the autograph of the Deity. In the light of such a revelation 
all objections to the principle must vanish; a true philosophy and a 
true religion should shake hands over it, agreeing fully with Paul 
that "the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are 
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his 
eternal power and Godhead." 



PLATO'S DEFINITION OF FORCE. 247 



CHAPTER XL 

THE CONTENT OK FORCE. 

PROFESSOR TAIT'S survey of advances in the physical sciences 
justifies the conclusion that force is only a name, the thing rep- 
resented by it being unknown. Is the scientist only a name-maker, 
or a dealer in substances? Is philosophy a barren nominalism, or is 
it the discovery of realities ? This Adamic habit of naming things, 
powers, and manifestations, is a great convenience, and indeed the first 
step in progress, but entirely unsatisfactory if one must stop with it. 
Wrapped up in names are problems, facts, laws, principles ; at least 
we fancy they mean something ; if they do not, they are of no more 
value than Plato's "wind-eggs." In this chapter we treat of the 
name and the thing, the sign and that which is signified. The name 
is the index to the reality, in quest of which men are consum- 
ing their lives. 

What is Force? In the Pamnenides Plato represents force as "the 
sudden," or that which has the power to change. "For the sudden," 
he says, "seems to signify some such thing as changing from it to 
either. For there is no change from standing, while standing ; nor a 
change from motion, while in motion ; but that wonderful nature, 
'the sudden/ is situated between motion and standing, and is in no 
time ; and into this and from this, that N which is moved changes, for 
the purpose of standing still ; and that which stands for the purpose 
of being moved." Every translator of this passage confesses that it 
is ambiguous ; but we introduce it to show that Plato's conception 
of force was that of an influence which affected motions and changes, 
or is the cause of both stability and instability in the universe. He 
names it "the sudden" because it is the unexpected, the unknown. 
While this definition is indefinite, it is as comprehensive as any that 
modern science has succeeded in inventing, and in some respects less 
objectionable, for it points to the theistic notion. 

Any observer of nature must conclude that in, through, and over 
all its departments or kingdoms is an influence to which every thing 
is more or less obedient, an influence originating, controlling, per- 
petuating, and voicing supreme governmental ideas, which, the more 
they are studied, seem to reflect the presence of a single governing 
mind. Nature is the theater of motion, activity, growth, decay, and 
revival. Over all its processes, variations, and developments, through 



248 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

all its history of appearances, a dominant influence has been felt, 
and is clearly recognizable. To that influence, supreme, lofty, in- 
cessant, science has given the name of Force. The selection of the 
name we do not criticise, since from a scientific view of nature, it is 
as appropriate as any. The word, as applied, does not contain all 
the facts ; but so far as it means anything, it means the dominant 
idea in nature, as understood by the inquirer. 

The relation of force to matter, which involves either their identi- 
fication or a statement of their differences, has provoked not a little 
discussion in philosophic circles, the earlier opinion being an 
affirmation of their differences, while the later borders on a qualified 
identification. The common observer resents at once as fictitious, and 
in a sense impious, the suggestion that force, or the propelling in- 
fluence of nature, is to any extent identical with nature ; but the 
philosopher does not consult the common observer, who, he imagines, 
sees with veiled face, and therefore reports incorrectly concerning 
nature. Is force identical with matter, or are they two empirico- 
physical principles, with properties and functions entirely unlike? 
Ludwig Buchner is fond of distinguishing force and matter as two 
eternal elements ; but he has been overruled by others, who insist 
that matter is the product of force ; that force is the essential fact, 
while matter is a shadowy, phenomenal issue. The relation of force 
to matter in a philosophic sense, may be expressed in three forms : 
1. Force is identical with matter ; 2. Force is inherent in matter ; 
3. Force is an independent element. As to the identity of force and 
matter, the proof is wanting ; besides, the pantheistic complexion of 
the theory must condemn it. Identification is confusion of things 
essentially separate. Muscular force is not muscle; a crystallizing 
force is not a crystal. 

The Dynamical theory of matter, or the residence of force in 
matter, has been employed in vindication of the supposition of the 
identity of the two ; but the supposition itself is grounded on the 
generally admitted belief of the inherency of force in matter. The 
advocates of " inherency" are numerous, embracing both theistic and 
materialistic thinkers, who assume it from different motives. Prof. 
Huxley says, "Matter is all-powerful and all-sufficient ;" Minark holds 
to the theory of " innate forces;" and Buchner divides the forces of 
matter into physical, chemical, and mechanical. Spencer, employing 
the word " gravity " as generic, asserts that it manifests itself as heat, 
light, electricity, magnetism, cohesion, affinity, and gravity, or in 
seven different forms ; but, whatever the form, it belongs to, and in- 
heres in matter. There is but one force, and its forms are convert- 
ible into one another. The old division of forces into kinetic or 



RELATION OF FORCE TO MATTER. 249 

active, and latent has been, or should be, abandoned, for there is no 
such thing as latent force; but whatever the division, or how 
numerous the forms, it is a prevalent assumption that force inheres 
in matter. 

The word " inherent," however, is misleading. The materialist 
means by "inherent," not a quality, but the essential element, the 
thing itself, and so blots out the distinction between force and matter. 
Force is inherent in that it is intimately associated with matter, but 
the association has its limitations. Force is necessary to, but is not 
the quality of, matter. Force is a necessary condition, but not a 
necessary quality, of matter. The relation is one of condition, but 
not of quality. 

If not identical with matter, and not a quality of matter, Force 
must be external to matter, and can be understood only as it is sepa- 
rated from matter. The difficulty of separating the two, the materi- 
alist magnifies into an impossibility ; but the union of force and 
matter has an analogy in the union of soul and body, which we 
are aware is to the materialist not only inexplicable but absurd. 
His opinion aside, force is the soul of matter, to be interpreted as the 
acting and interacting influence, separate from that on and with 
which it acts, and as having independent qualities, functions, and 
purposes. This is going beyond the name to the thing, but an ex- 
pression of the relation of force and matter involves a definition of 
terms used. Force is not matter; matter is not force. Force may 
be inherent in matter, if "inherent" be explained; it is not 
identical with matter. 

As there is a distinction between force and matter, so there is a 
distinction between force and law, which in some philosophies are re- 
garded identical ; hence, the confusion in thinking, and the failure 
to understand phenomena. Matter is the theater of force ; law is 
the regulation of force. Force acts not only within the limits of 
space, but also within the limits of law, but is not to be confounded 
with either. The law of force, or the methods by which force is 
communicated and conducted, are not as clearly expressed in phi- 
losophy as the inquirer might desire. How force acts at all is really a 
leading question. Hermann Lotze decides that the element of time 
is not involved in the communication or transmission of force, and 
also that force can act only at a distance. Accepting these conclu- 
sions as correct, they point to certain characteristics of force which 
do not belong to matter ; but the law of transmission yet lacks ex- 
pression. Certain laws, as the law of gravitation, the law of 
reflection and refraction, the law of cohesion and adhesion, and the 
laws of light and sound, are intended to express the methods of 



250 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

activity in the physical world ; but while they furnish a clue to the 
presence of force, they do not strictly define it. The revelation of a 
method of activity is not equivalent to a revelation of the thing that 
is active. Hence, law and force, harmonious and suggestive of each 
other, are distinct and individual. 

A still closer distinction will disclose more fully the isolation of 
force. Force must not be confounded with its manifestations, some 
of which seem to be forces themselves. The usual classification of 
forces is a classification of the manifestation of forces. The old terms, 
"centripetal" and "centrifugal," and the later terms, "vital," "phys- 
ical," "chemical," "mechanical," which abound in science and. phi- 
losophy, express only the manifestations of force, and do not convey 
any idea of its nature. A "centripetal" force is a form of speech 
intended to represent the direction in which force extends itself; a 
"moving" force is that which produces motion; "vital" force is that 
which produces life. Motion is a result, and must not be confounded 
with that which produced it. When force produces force, we can 
only speak of the latter as secondary and mechanical ; for it as incon- 
sistent to confound a secondary or resultant force with the original or 
producing force, as it is to confound any effect with its cause. When 
Kant speaks of the forces that occupy space, he can only mean the 
secondary or mechanical forces inherent in matter, the resultant of 
the primary force that rules everywhere. Force must be distinguished 
from forces. Force is not the aggregation of forces. Forces are 
those manifestations of activity that science denominates physical, 
chemical, vital, mechanical ; force is the parent of forces. Dis- 
tinguishing force from manifestation or forces, we approach the 
thing itself. 

Matter is the theater of force, therefore not force itself; law is the 
regulation or method of force, therefore not force itself; forces are 
manifestations of force, therefore not force itself. Separating it from 
all its relations and incorporations, we are compelled to deal with 
force in the abstract, or as the transcendental factor in the universe. 
Mivart attributes all existences to an " internal force," which he styles 
a "single form of force," implying that the parent force is capa- 
ble of transmutations ; but it is not a form of force we seek, it is 
force itself. 

The necessity of assigniug to force some attributes or properties is 
imperative, if an intellectual conception of it be entertained. The 
first condition of a conception of any thing is attribute. A knowledge 
of attributes is not a knowledge of substance or reality, but they af- 
ford standing-room for thought ; and in this case standing-room even 
is desirable. The difference between an intellectual concession to the 



CONFLICT OF SECONDARY FORCES. 251 

existence of force and an intellectual conception of its nature, must 
be kept in mind, in order to advance beyond a dreamy or imaginative 
conclusion respecting it. Wanted, manifestations of force — these we 
have in forces ; wanted, the laws of force — these have been named ; 
wanted, the theater of force — this has been pointed out ; wanted, the 
attributes of force — these we seek. 

It is a superb fact that, going out of phenomena, or merely ob- 
serving the play of things, there seems to be the manifestation of but 
a single force ; that is, the unity of force, notwithstanding its varieties, 
may be proclaimed. This is important, beyond all question ; it sim- 
plifies the problem of attributes ; it harmonizes the secondary or de- 
rivative with the primitive or original force. From a superficial obser- 
vation of nature, one might conclude that force is suicidal, so incessant 
is the conflict or antagonism of secondary forces. To preserve the 
balance or sustain the equilibrium, however, the observer soon dis- 
covers that action and reaction are equal, and that, however violent 
and aggressive the destructive tendencies, the recuperative powers of 
nature are equal to any emergency or distress. Counter-irritation is 
also a principle in nature, intended to preserve its order and insure 
its stability. Gravitation draws downward, but the blade of wheat 
overcomes it and shoots upward. Here is the victory of one force 
over another, the resultant being, not destruction, but the conserva- 
tion of a benevolent end. On the other hand, the majestic oak 
graces the hill-side, but a thunderbolt demolishes it. This is a victory 
of a destructive force, but it is not always in operation. Benevolent 
forces are in constant operation ; destructive forces only occasionally 
manifest themselves; so that, by a just balance of the facts, it is 
clear that the conflict of forces is in the interest of benevolent ends, 
reflecting the teleological principle, and pointing to a wise supervision 
of nature. 

Besides, the fact must not be overlooked that the conflict in nature 
is the conflict of purely secondary forces. Original force is not in 
conflict with secondary forces, but the secondary forces themselves, 
as gravitation and cohesive attraction, are in antagonism. The con- 
flict is the result of the variety of forces and the variety of ends to 
be accomplished by them ; hence, it is more of a seeming than a real 
conflict. It is a conflict for the best ends, or a combination for the 
execution of the purposes of nature. Taking this view of the com- 
plex forces of nature, it points to an underlying unity, a unity of 
idea, and a unity of force. 

The modality of force in no wise contradicts the hypothesis of the 
unity of force. Herbert Spencer now regards all imponderables as 
modes of one force. The variety of mode in the expression of force 



252 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

is no greater than the variety of color into which a ray of light may 
be dissolved. Colors do not invalidate the conclusion of one light; 
modes of force do not invalidate the conclusion of one force. The 
unity of light is no truer than the unity of force. As electricity is 
one, but is called by different names as its manifestations differ, so 
force may be chemical, physical, mechanical, or vital in manifesta- 
tion, and be the same. Science has drifted into the doctrine of the 
unity of a supreme force ; there is no polytheism in science. Spencer 
speaks of an "infinite force;" Faraday, Helmholtz, Carpenter, Liebig, 
and Meyer stand as sponsors for the scientic dogma of unity of force. 

Scientific minds quote approvingly the doctrine of the correlation 
and conservation of forces, or the convertibility of forces, as the 
proof of the relationship of forces, or the final unity of force. To 
the doctrine itself we make no objection ; to the materialistic conclu- 
sion that the sum of these forces constitutes the entire force of the 
universe, we demur, for no number of secondary forces will equal the 
supreme force from which they are derived. Mr. H. C. Carey is in- 
clined to reduce all forces to electricity, even insisting that it closely 
resembles brain power ; but this is carrying the deduction to an ex- 
treme. Whether the atomic unit is hydrogen, and the supreme sec- 
ondary force is electricity, we care not, only so that the supreme 
force is not confounded with either. Reference is sometimes made by 
scientists, especially by Spencer, to persistence of force, by which is meant 
the preservation of force in one form or another ; that force itself 
never is lost; that it will reappear in new forms if its old manifesta- 
tions cease to exist. This is an index to the character of force ; it is 
one and unchangeable in essence forever. 

Chemistry has been defined as the identification of the one in the 
many, or unity in the manifold; and, so far as it distinguishes the 
one from the many, it is a very concise and expressive definition ; 
but so far as it confounds the one with the many, it is a learned sup- 
port of pantheism, and must be rejected. From the apparent conflict 
of secondary forces, from the modality of forces, from the correlation 
and conservation of forces, from the persistence of forces, and from 
the definitions of science, the conclusion of the unity of force seems 
scientifically warranted. In the highest sense, there are not two 
forces ; there is one only. This is simplification ; this is progress. 

Let us advance to another conception of force. The word itself 
conveys the idea of resources, and includes possibility, sufficiency. 
When one speaks of the power of a government, several things are 
signified, as naval and military equipments, wealth, patriotism, religion, 
and the common intelligence of the nation. The word " force," taken 
in the abstract, is suggestive of a complex idea ; it suggests resources, 



ATTRIBUTES OF FORCE. 253 

possibilities, reserved powers. It means accumulation, exhaustless 
energies. In the sense now considered, the universe stands as its 
product, the masterpiece of its work ; no conception is too great for 
its capability, no execution too small for its notice. The relation of 
force to the universe is the relation of creative power to its product. 
Force is the spirit of creation, the spirit of rule, guidance, preserva- 
tion. It is competent both to create and rule. 

Creation involves, presupposes omnipotence, and omnipotence has 
been regarded as a credential of personality. Schopenhauer's idea of 
the ultimate principle is mil, or blind, unregulated, and therefore 
capricious will-power. Whether the " infinite force," as Spencer styles 
it, is the force of will or the force of anything else, its omnipotence 
points to an omnipotent personality, and yet is not conclusive of it. 
Again, whatever the force is, it is invisible ; it lies back of phenom- 
ena. It is all around us ; it is in every thing ; it propels every thing ; 
it breathes life and death everywhere ; it is ceaseless, and slumbers 
not. The invisibility of force is consistent with the universality of 
force, and both make for an invisible, universal personality ; at least 
they raise the suspicion of personality. Even science proclaims the 
invisibility of reality ; the visible is a sham or a shadow. The hiding 
of his presence is as potent as the hiding of his power. 

Thus far we have ascertained the locus of the activity of Force — 
the universe of space and time ; the method of its activity — law ; the 
products of its activity — phenomena ; and necessarily some of its at- 
tributes, or conditions of existence, as unity, power, invisibility, and 
infinity. Shall we stop here ? 

Stopping at this point, we should conclude for an all-powerful, in- 
visible, impersonal Force. As yet, there is no absolute proof of 
personality, for all these attributes or conditions might co-exist, co- 
operate, and unite in a single force, which would be wanting in other 
evidences of personality. 

Strictly speaking, if Force is a Personality, it must possess other 
attributes than these named, for a materialist may agree with our 
conclusions thus far and be a materialist still. Are there other 
attributes ? 

The revelation of nature or the universe is the only book whose 
pages the scientist will consult, and if the imprint of a Personal 
Force is not on the first page he is not inclined to believe in such a 
force. Looking through the volume, he would be compelled to ad- 
mit what at first he indignantly rejected. 

Keeping in the background the idea of personality as the goal of 
investigation, we proceed, by a purely scientific method, to inquire 
for other attributes of the infinite force, regardless of what they shall 



254 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

teach on the subject. The suspicion grows into conviction, as one 
makes a tour through nature, that the omnipotent and impersonal 
force, the spirit of creation, is conscious of itself. Neither gravitation 
nor crystallization makes an impression of self-consciousness, because 
they are secondary forces or results; but the supreme force, in its 
government of nature, makes the impression that it knows what it is 
doing. If it is ignorant of itself, or insensible of its activities, it is 
inexplicable how it acts with uniformity under similar conditions, and 
equally difficult to explain its unity. To admit consciousness to man 
and deny it to the supreme Force is to raise man above the supreme 
Force ; but this involves absurdity. Absurd or not, man is the su- 
preme Force, or the infinite force is conscious of itself. Conscious- 
ness, however, is the capital attribute of personality. 

Secondary forces are without self-consciousness, and without reg- 
ulation, direction, and control, they would wreck the universe. Let 
electricity have a chance, and it would burn up the cosmos. Grav- 
itation unrestrained would shatter the firmament. Fire unbridled 
would reduce the earth to a cinder. Something controls. Natural, 
secondary forces are under restraint, embarrassed by the presence of 
a superior influence, and order prevails throughout the dominions. 
On the whole, nature is calm because -of a supernatural presence. 
The subserviency of secondary causes to the First Cause, the re- 
straining hand upon nature's erratic and rebellious dispositions, is 
proof that the Force above nature is conscious, understanding not 
only what it is doing, but what ought to be done to preserve the 
peace of the universe. 

If the supreme Force be conscious of itself, it follows that order, 
peace, masterly rule, and development are ends contemplated and 
sought by this Force. The activity of Force is in some way allied to 
its results. This alliance is not only chronological, which is all that 
materialism has hitherto allowed, but it is causal, which implies a 
contemplation of results, or thought and purpose embodied in activ- 
ity. This is teleology ! We know it. The omnipotent, self-conscious 
Force is, per necessity, a teleological Force, acting with something 
in view, seeking certain ends, and, at all events, promoting order, 
stability, and development. It certainly conducts itself as if it had 
these ends in view. 

Were it indifferent to ends, it might sleep or violate the conditions 
of order, or it might withdraw itself entirely from the world of mat- 
ter. If it is foreign to matter, as we had heretofore conjectured, what 
is the bond of association with matter but the ends it consciously 
seeks to secure? As nature is the embodiment of order, beauty, 
adaptation, and development, these must be the ends of the supreme 



FORCE— ENERG Y—GOD. 255 

Force ; and if man is its highest product, then intelligence and holi- 
ness must be added to the designs according to which its activities are 
regulated. For if order, beauty, adaptation, intelligence, and holi- 
ness were not designed by the supreme Force, it is difficult to explain 
their existence. Dr. J. W. Dawson affirms that the science that re- 
jects the divine principle in creation is " impotent to explain nature." 
So we think, and add that nature is not explained at all unless it 
was designed, and design establishes personality. 

Governed by the reasoning indicated, the infinite Force appears 
to be a self-conscious, thinking, rational force. On this ground 
man is justified in becoming a worshiper. Beyond this philosoph- 
ical outline, or preparation for the theistic affirmation, we need not 
now advance. 

What is Force ? Kant says it is an endowment of God. John 
Fiske, a disciple of Spencer, says, if he must choose between the ex- 
pressions, " God is a spirit" and " God is a force," he will choose the 
latter. In the philosophical sense Force is a name, and not a defini- 
tion. Even the philosophers are suspecting that it is an insufficient 
name for the thing it pretends to represent, and they are therefore 
quietly substituting the word " energy," as more expressive of the 
spirit of creation or matter. After another decade " energy" will be 
outlawed, and another word proposed. What word? What is the 
imcommunicable, the unnamed word yet to be spoken by the philoso- 
pher? Thomas Carlyle said: "Force, force, everywhere force! 
Illimitable whirlwind of force which envelops us ; everlasting whirl- 
wind, high as immensity, old as eternity— what is it? It is Al- 
mighty God !" Force — Energy — God. The first a name ; the second 
a definition ; the third a Personality. To this philosophy will come. 
Weary with its materialistic phraseology, it will consult the language 
of religion for the Unnamed, and find it in — God. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE FIRST CAUSE. 



SCHLEGEL affirms that the idea of God is the only idea, all 
others being derivative and subordinate ; and Lotze teaches that 
the " absolute, living and creative Spirit alone is" all else being sec- 
ondary, and the effect of one all-sufficient cause. The study of this 
Idea is the imperative of all preliminaries. 

The problem of the First Cause is the problem of the universe. 



256 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Given the First, and the descending series through infinite gradations 
and to an infinite number may be traced, arranged, explained. With- 
out it confusion reigns in inquiry, and conclusion is the merest con- 
jecture. A Beginner and a beginning — one or the other is required ; 
one implies the other ; to find one is to find both ; to find one or the 
other is the object of the mysterious searchings of philosophy. To 
accept either without demonstration is contrary to the function of 
philosophy ; to reject both until demonstrated prevents demonstration. 
The problem embracing the questions of self-existence, the essentia of 
being, the attributes of absolute spirit, and its relations to phenomena 
is too large to be confined to a single aspect ; to be understood it 
must be grasped in its magnitude, and every feature receive exhaust- 
ive analysis. Philosophy, tireless in its purpose, but changeable in 
its methods, has undertaken to reduce the idea of God to a concrete 
form ; but its results have been far from satisfactory. 

We shall examine the different schools of thought which three 
centuries have produced in the attempt to solve the first and final 
problem, namely, the original causer of the universe, observing that up 
to this hour the problem is unsolved. Varying in methods of reason- 
ing, these systems have a single aim, and when closely studied reveal 
an inner bond of connection, as if leagued together in a destructive 
purpose, which they propose to accomplish each by methods of its 
own. In the nineteenth century, or the latest philosophy, the stu- 
dent discovers a reproduction or imitation of the philosophical fabrics 
of the ancient Greeks, Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Spencer, and Hackel 
having advanced but a little beyond Democritus, Heraclitus, or the 
Ionics in general. They often whistle the old tunes of Greece, but 
palm them off as the original melodies of the modern musician. If, how- 
ever, these systems exhibit an originality of thought in the investiga- 
tion of the problem of problems, they relapse into the same icono- 
clastic conclusions which the old Grecian materialists foretold. Nothing 
essentially new, certainly nothing striking in results, may be antici- 
pated from a study of the materialistic phases of modern thought. 

In what manner philosophy has considered the problems, what 
processes it has adopted, and what conclusions reached, we are now 
prepared to learn. To exhibit these inquiries and their results, we 
set in tabular form the leading philosophies of modern times, or those 
which have exercised a superior influence in the field of investigation. 

I. The creed of Sensationalism or Empiricism, namely, knowledge 
is derived from sensation, necessarily precludes by its limitations any 
knowledge whatever of the First Cause. 

II. The embryonic philosophy of Positivism, which teaches that 
knowledge is limited to material phenomena, and that the principle 



ADVERSE PHILOSOPHIC CREEDS. 257 

of causation is irrational, is inadequate to the interpretation of a 
First Cause. 

III. The Common Sense Philosophy, heralding ultimate facts, but 
unable to explain them, affords no ground for belief in a great First 
Cause. 

IV. In Pessimism, the melancholy wail of atheistic conviction, 
there is no foundation for faith in a Supreme Being. 

V. Idealism, an ebbing and flowing tide, rising betimes to super- 
natural heights, sinks back into unsatisfying sentiment, leaving the 
mind bewildered rather than contented respecting the character of 
the First Cause. 

VI. The philosophy of Relativity, imprisoning knowledge within 
the walls of the phenomenal, opens no trap-door into the mysteries 
of the Infinite. 

VII. The theory of Associationalism, anchoring itself in the cor- 
relation and conservation of forces, sinks lower than any in ignorance 
of the First Cause. 

VIII. The philosophy of Evolution, or Spencerianism, instead of 
carrying the mind to starlit heights of vision, sinks it into the tertiary 
depths of impenetrable nothingness. 

These let us consider in their order. 

Beginning with Sensationalism, its failure to discover the Infinite, 
with both its process and object understood, is not surprising. Turning 
its back upon the Infinite, it never wheeled around face ward toward 
God. Aristotle, having declared that knowledge is derived from 
sensation, not only disturbed the thinkers of his age, but also sug- 
gested a theory that the moderns appropriated, building upon it a 
materialistic philosophy, damaging both to intellectual research and 
the religious spirit. Bacon, wedded to the physical sciences, and 
Hobbes, dealing with metaphysical as if they were physical problems, 
paved the way for Locke, who came forth as the champion of the 
theory in his explanation of the laws and operations of the human un- 
derstanding, that sensation is the source of knowledge. Logically, 
empiricism must maintain that the condition of knowledge is a posteriori; 
it is derived from without, or at the most from experience, and the 
mind has no a priori power to discover truth, or reflect upon it when 
presented. Sensationalism, therefore, is experience-philosophy, or the 
theory of a posteriori knowledge, which is essentially atheistic. 

To produce an overflow of materialistic sentiment, there must 
have been in Locke's theory of the mind, or of the origin of knowl- 
edge, something that naturally and logically led to it. Atheism is 
not an artificial result qf sensationalism. Locke's starting-point was 
the denial of innate ideas, or the emptiness of mind until it began 

17 



258 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

to fill up by impressions from external sources. Self-knowledge, or 
the power to originate ideas, does not belong to mind, as it first 
manifests itself; it is a mirror, reflecting what is cast upon it. Such 
a theory allows to the mind no spirituality, no independent, original, 
self-acting, or self-determining power ; it does away with the imma- 
terialism of man at a stroke. Locke meant not to go so far; but 
the skeptics engineered sensationalism into the camp of materialism 
without any difficulty. If the human mind is not immaterial, is there 
any immaterialism ? Who will affirm that God is spiritual, if man is 
not? Accordingly, knowledge consists in the perception of sensations ; 
consciousness is " static, spectacular, sensible ;" the soul is mortal ; death 
ends all. Empirical psychology could reach no other conclusion. 

What, now, of its relation to the Causer? Evidently, the same 
method of argumentation which disposes of mind, disposes of God 
also ; and even Locke was compelled by his philosophy to teach 
that, as knowledge is the product of sensations, man can know noth- 
ing of substance, being, or God. Man must float in the world of 
sensations, like an insect in the atmosphere, impressed by the flow 
of its currents, without the power of self-direction, or control of 
impressions. Sensations we know ; but substance, being, God, we 
can not know. From admissions or conclusions so unfortunate, Con- 
dillac, Hume, and others were justified in proclaiming a materialism 
not at all foreseen by the founder of empiricism ; and afterward, 
Bentham and the elder Mill, the one in elaborating his utilitarianism, 
and the other his materialism, only completed the destructive work 
that Locke so innocently forged. Indeed, the sensationalism of Aris- 
totle, amplified into a system by Locke, is one of the pillars of 
modern philosophy, especially English philosophy. Huxley has af- 
firmed that " our sensations, our pleasures, and our pains, and the 
relations of these, make up the sum total of the elements of positive, 
unquestionable knowledge." Spencer, as is well known, is an advo- 
cate of the experience-philosophy ; and, as an evidence of the ma- 
terialistic character of such philosophy, it is not contrary to fact to 
state that these latest and living exponents of it affirm that God is 
unknowable. The First can not be known through the sensations, 
and as sensation is the sole source of knowledge, there is no possible 
hope of ever knowing the Divine Cause. Strangely, these advocates 
spurn the charge of being materialists, though they support material- 
ism, on the ground that they do not deny the existence of a Supreme 
Being, but affirm he is beyond us, indiscernible, inaccessible, beyond 
all knowledge, beyond all thought. What is the difference between 
a being that can not be known or conceived of, and a being that 
does not exist? As between them, there is a possible preference, for 



POSITIVISM OF COMTE. 259 

to say that God does not exist is absolute atheism, but to say that we 
know nothing about him is only a confession of the feebleness of our 
powers to grasp a being so infinitely great as the Uncaused must be. 
The one extinguishes the Uncaused; the other enshrouds him in an 
inaccessible gloom. The one blots him out; the other says he can not 
be found. In the latter view he is the Charles Ross of philosophy, 
believed to exist but forever undiscoverable. Such is the conclusion 
of Sensationalism touching the problem of the First Cause. 

II. What is the interpretation of Positivism? In one respect it 
is kindred to sensationalism, as, in its affirmation that knowledge is 
confined to the phenomena of the material world, it can never rise in 
its apprehensions above phenomena; it can never discern substance, 
or penetrate being, Comte is the author of this school of philosophers, 
a man less fearless of consequences than Locke, less systematic in his 
system, and more eager to overthrow existing religious ideas of God 
than to establish the truth. Locke searches the laws of mind ; Comte, 
the laws of matter. One is an internal thinker, the other an external 
thinker. Locke's internal philosophy in its last analysis became ex- 
ternal ; that is, from the laws of mind he could not predicate sub- 
jective existence, or substance back of phenomena. From the laws 
of matter, cognition of whose phenomena is the sum of knowledge, 
Comte undertook to establish the same conclusion. Reversing the 
method, he emerged into the materialism to which empiricism had 
conducted its friends. Locke was the right hand, and Comte the 
left, in the movement against immaterialism. 

Adequately to establish his conclusion, Comte arrayed his forces 
against the principle of causation, as recognized by consciousness, and 
as inductively observed in nature ; and refused to accept the Aris- 
totelian category of causes, which has been regarded as almost com- 
plete. The notion of cause seems native to mind ; it is that from 
which the mind is led to a conception of the order of the universe, 
and the existence of the cause of causes. An apple falls from a 
tree ; the mind inquires the cause in the belief that there is a cause ; 
and so strong is the belief that one can not be educated out of it. 
The force of the idea of cause and its relations to, and proof of, a 
first cause, Comte could not escape ; hence, his effort to annihilate it. 
He says : ' ' The inevitable tendency of our intelligence is toward a 
philosophy radically theological, so often as we seek to penetrate, on 
whatever pretext, into the intimate nature of phenomena." That is, 
a recognition of the phenomena of nature in their relations as causes 
and effects tends to establish the theological conception of God — a conclu- 
sion that he proposes to overthrow because his theory requires him to 
do so. The Idea of God and Positivism can not co-exist ; one or the 



260 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

other must go. After a Spencerian fashion, he does not deny causa- 
tion, but he pronounces it inscrutable, unknown, unknowable, un- 
thinkable. What a hiding-place for philosophy is the word ' ' unknown !" 
If God is in question, concede his existence, and then blot him out 
of sight' by saying he is unknowable ; if the principle of causation is 
under consideration, say it exists, but pronounce it unknowable. 
Phenomena may be known, but not their causes. What is may be 
studied, but not why it is, or what produced it. 

Hume varied from this in holding that by causation is meant only 
a succession ; that is, events are a series of successional facts where 
legal connection can not be established. As regards creation he as- 
serts that no one is competent as a witness to testify that causation, 
as understood to imply cause and effect, was involved in the process. 
John S. Mill espouses a similar view, reducing causes and effects to 
mere sequences, or successive acts. Sir William Hamilton likewise 
trends toward that ignis fatuus by saying that " we have no percep- 
tion of the causal nexus in the material world." If the principle of 
causation be reduced to an appearance of successional movements, 
without connection, or whose connection can not be established, or on 
no a priori grounds admitted ; if the natural world displays no con- 
nectionalism ; if causality, hitherto relied on as invulnerable, is. an 
inductive hallucination ; then the argument for a First Cause has re- 
ceived a blow from which it can scarcely recover. To eliminate the 
lurking theology from the principle of causation, to overthrow the 
principle, as the physician destroys disease, was Comte's great aim. 
What Locke ignorantly achieved, Comte purposely wrought out, the 
elimination of the idea of a First Cause. What deadly, destructive 
criticism is this? Sensationalism, beginning with mind, ends in 
materialism ; Positivism, beginning with matter, pronounces the the- 
ology of causation inscrutable, and ends in a godless universe. The 
former says God is unknowable ; the latter, that he does not exist. 
The one names itself a guarded materialism ; the other is atheism. 

III. Next in order, is the philosophy of "Common-sense," its 
name being suggestive of fair dealing with intuitions, consciousness, 
historic facts, and metaphysical truths. Surely, Reid, who represents 
this phase of speculation, and who discovered the dilemma of his 
predecessors, will not fall into the same, or an equal error, but point 
out a way of escape from destructive conclusions. Let us see. Reid 
enunciates the doctrine of ultimate facts, which, in its phraseology, 
is the core of a great philosophical utterance ; for there must be 
basal truths, foundation-stones of belief, on which human history 
may rest. With Reid, however, these corner-stones are not what 
philosophy demands; they are, in short, not basal facts, but inter- 



COMMON-SENSE FACTS. 261 

mediate facts which require solution. An initial fact presupposes no 
anterior fact ; it is the end of speculation, solution, inquiry. To 
such a final fact Keid does not conduct us, for his finals are sensation, 
memory, imagination, the ordinary operations of intellection, which 
the common sense of mankind accept as real, and against which it 
would be useless to contend. Quite vigorously, but really unnecessarily, 
he makes a defense of these common-sense facts, requiring belief in 
them, as they are related to life, society, government, and religion. 

Back of these, however, we must go if the problem of philosophy 
be solved. On none of these can the final fact be predicated — the 
quest of philosophy. Furthermore, the value of the theory is de- 
stroyed by Reid's own confession that, going back and recognizing 
the initial facts as given, no explanation of them is possible — the 
very thing the truth-searcher demands. The idea of an original fact 
is self-explanation. A noise occurs in the orchard ; the original fact 
is, not that something made the noise, but that a pear fell to the 
ground, the cause being thus ascertained. Not generals, but particu- 
lars, not something, but the exact somewhat, the searcher must find, 
or he is in the dark. A so-called first fact, without explanation, im- 
plies that causes are still remote and obscure ; but in a true phi- 
losophy the distance to the remote must be blotted out, and the ob- 
scure must become transparent. According to Reid, a sensation is an 
original fact which common sense forces us to believe ; but the first cause 
of the original fact, he declares, can not be discovered. In what is this 
superior to Positivism? Not denying the principle of causation, the 
theory of Reid implies that it can not be investigated, which advances 
the inquirer no farther than the dogma of Positivism. As Locke did 
not intend to furnish a foothold for materialism in his empiricism, but 
did open the way for philosophical disasters, so Reid, unwittingly, 
furnished an argument for the most virulent assaults of Positivism. 

Respecting the problem of being, or God, Reid stands upon the 
platform of Locke, Hume, and Kant, none of whom, through their 
philosophies, ascended the mountain of vision, and from its summit 
beheld the Cause of the universe. Kant's " phenomena," Locke's 
"images," Hume's "impressions," and Reid's "beliefs," differing 
slightly in character, sustained a uniform relation to the problem of 
problems, echoing a nescience of the character of the Supreme 
Power, and virtually banishing the Creator from the universe. 

In the " Common-sense" philosophy there is the breaking out of 
a doctrine which, though characteristic of the earlier modern systems 
of speculative thought, is more patent in Reid, and becomes the 
shibboleth of the latest apostles of philosophy. According to Locke, 
sensation is the source of knowledge, which signifies original empti- 



262 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ness of mind, and a qualified imbecility of the mental powers ; ac- 
cordiDg to Comte, causation is inscrutable, which signifies mysteries 
that can not be solved ; and now, in the assertion that such mind- 
facts as memory, imagination, and will, can not be explained, Reid 
prepares the way for that final accusation of mental imbecility which 
characterizes Spencer and his followers. Had he contented himself 
with denying to man the power to comprehend the infinite, he had 
occupied high and unimpeachable ground ; but, in addition thereto, 
he denies to mind a knowledge of itself, or allows only an acquaint- 
ance with its powers and functions, which even the untutored readily 
admit. Evidently, in Reid, we go not below the surface. 

IV. Advancing in our analysis of these systems, we approach a 
form of philosophy which, icicle-like, has no recommendation other 
than that it exists. Without heat, without light, it is rigid and 
comfortless, and goes farther in its surrender than any of the preced- 
ing. Pessimism is no longer an abstraction, no longer a stray possi- 
bility, but an actual conjecture, the pillar of a philosophy that claims 
for itself a rational basis. Its earlier exponent was Schopenhauer, a 
man who hated his mother, and interpreted the universe from a dys- 
peptic standpoint ; its present advocate is Hartmann, a young lion of 
Germany, eager, bold, self-sufficient. These two thinkers, assigning 
to others the question of the operations of the mind and the origin of 
knowledge, saw that the problem of the existence of a Supreme Power is 
chief, and devoted their energies to its solution. Neither in sensation- 
alism, nor in positivism, nor in the "common-sense" philosophy, is 
the problem the subject of direct contemplation, its appearance being 
due to other problems with which it is associated. Contrariwise, the 
pessimists of Germany discerned the supremacy of the problem of the 
First Cause, which, instead of ignoring, they sought to explain ; but 
the explanation is an Arctic blast, withering the flowers of faith and 
hope which hitherto have flourished in the warmer latitudes of re- 
ligion. Schopenhauer sees everywhere the manifestations of an iron 
will-power; not an intelligent personal will, but a blind, impersonal 
force, nature speaking the words of a characterless mover and gov- 
ernor. Force is omnipresent, an idiotic runaway, building up and 
tearing down with fiendish delight, and creating disorder and misery 
for the mere pleasure of it. In his view, the world is badly managed, 
its government being rather one of chance than of purpose, and the 
hope of improvement is a delusive anticipation. To this pessimistic 
representation of the world Hartmann does not take exception, but 
he has attempted to define the will-power of Schopenhauer by adding 
to it the faculty of reason, and endowing the Somewhat with the 
powers of being, for will and reason certainly indicate being. Here 



PHILOSOPHIC REGENERATION. 263 

is ontology; but Hartmann perpetrates a strange paralogism by in- 
sisting that this ontological power is unconscious, and that will and 
reason, though acting in cod cert, act unconsciously. Hence, God, in 
the latest pessimism of Germany, is the Unconscious. Reason govern- 
ing and will enforcing, nevertheless the Supreme Power acts without 
knowing that it acts. Hartmann's God is a somnambulistic creature, 
a walking deeper in the universe, moving according to the dictates 
of a rational intelligence, but meanwhile unconscious. Between an 
unconscious deity and no deity at all, there can be no choice; one is 
as destructive of Worship, faith, prayer, religion, as the other. 
According to Schopenhauer, God is a wandering idiot ; according to 
Hartmann, he is a sleeping monster. Of both we are equally afraid. 

According to the systems previously considered, the First Cause 
is unknowable ; but, excepting the evident atheism of Comte, they 
impliedly agree that there is a First Cause, which, however, is beyond 
our investigation. Pessimism lifts the veil, and touches our eye- 
balls with flashes of celestial light, inviting us to behold what was 
unknowable to Locke, Hume, Reid, Kant, and Hamilton, and what 
did not exist, according to Comte. And what is the what ? A divine 
majesty, in truth ; but a blind rover, without a throne, a sleepy-head, 
or a prostrate being, drugged into perpetual unconsciousness by the 
poison of the universe, or by the tireless vibrations of his own nature. 
Enough of pessimism. 

V. In Idealism philosophy attained a regeneration. From the 
days of Leibnitz, the idealistic stand-point has been occupied by many 
noted thinkers, among them Kant, Berkeley, Wolff, Fichte, Schelling, 
and Hegel, all of whom perceived the reality of subjective experi- 
ences, and the superiority of the subjective to the objective in the 
universe. As contrasted with sensationalism, idealism is as the 
mountain to the foot-hill ; as contrasted with positivism, it is as faith 
to unbelief; as contrasted with the "common-sense" dogma, one 
fathoms the ocean while the other skims the surface ; as contrasted 
with pessimism, the one is an unlit tunnel, the other is a sunrise. 
Idealism is the summit of modern philosophy. Either on that summit 
stand the philosophers, or on the slopes of sensationalism, positivism, 
pessimism, associationalism, or materialism. 

From the heights of idealism, a clearer view of the divine majesty, 
a more rational explanation of the universe, is taken ; nevertheless, 
we have somewhat against thee, O Idealism ! Not that thy works 
are evil, but that they are insufficient. Passing Leibnitz, Berkeley, 
and Wolff, we begin with Kant, as, perhaps, on the whole, the best 
representative of the earlier idealism, than which the very latest 
has surpassed it in few particulars, or a wider grasp of the facts in- 



264 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

volved. The theory of Kant respecting knowledge, though not es- 
sentially sensational or empirical, is not an advance, for he held that 
the world, owing to the intervention of space and time, can not be 
known as it really is. Phenomena alone can be known ; being, sub- 
stance, must forever remain unknown. With this limitation, a 
knowledge of God, from the evidence of external signs, is absolutely 
impossible. The step from phenomenon to God can not be taken. 
Seeing the destructive tendency of the theory, and its kinship to em- 
piricism, Kant did not press it as the conclusion of philosophy, but 
as a speculation, from which he emerged into an all-sufficient idealism. 
Between empiricism and idealism there is a wide difference, but Kant 
escaped the one and settled in the other through the avenue of 
the Reason. Of the Pure or theoretical and the Practical Reason 
he affirms that the former deals with abstract or metaphysical no- 
tions, the latter with common principles or facts, or the higher prob- 
lems in a common manner. As against this division, it may be urged 
that the same powers exercised by the theoretical reason are em- 
ployed by the practical ; wherefore it is difficult to understand why 
the one reason will reach conclusions the other will not approve. As 
evidence of the unfitness of the classification, it will be noted that 
Kant himself declares that, by the Pure Reason, the doctrine of .the 
immortality of the soul, the moral freedom of man, and the existence 
of God — the three greatest facts— can not be demonstrated. If the 
theoretical reason, dealing with psychological, cosmological, ontolog- 
ical, and theological ideas, finds itself unable to demonstrate the 
necessary and the true, then is it essentially weak. Either these 
great ideas must be abandoned, or a new instrument of defense and 
demonstration must be found. In the Practical reason, Kant finds a 
sufficient sustaining force. It disposes of paralogisms ; it unties Gor- 
dian knots ; it disperses fogs ; it lifts the darkness ; it harmonizes discrep- 
ancies, converting discords into concords ; it restores the unities, sees 
the infinite in the phenomenal, and at last demonstrates the existence 
of God and the immortality of man. Thanks to the Practical Reason ! 

Again, Kant taught that the practical reason is the source of pure 
a priori knowledge, which was in contrast with the a posteriori condi- 
tion of knowledge as affirmed by Locke, and is a safer theory. 

With its weaknesses, the Kantian scheme is elaborate and strong. 
It served as a breakwater against the sensationalism of Locke, and 
resisted the destructive tides of materialism, which for a long period 
threatened to sweep away the bulwarks of religious faith. After 
Kant, idealism was modified by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, three 
names usually linked together ; but that it rose any higher, or that 
more satisfactory results were reached, may be doubted. 



HEGEL AND HAMILTON. 265 

In Hegel we have the consummation of idealism, as in Liebnitz 
its beginning. Fichte advocated subjective idealism ; Schelling, ob- 
jective idealism ; Hegel, absolute idealism. Prominently unfolded in 
Hegel's logic are the doctrines of being, of essence, and of notion, all 
of which are conceived in a transcendental spirit and discussed in an 
obscure and subtle manner. As to being, it is per se ; it is the one, but 
the one is as truly the manifold. Though a variation from Spinozism, 
it can not be called an improvement or a purification. " What kind 
of an Absolute Being is that which does not contain in itself all that is 
actual, even evil included?" asks Hegel. God is this Absolute Being. 
God is not a "motionless, self-identical, unchangeable being, but a 
living, eternal process of absolute self-existence " — a developing being, 
including all development. This is the ideal of idealism. 

In his treatment of the doctrine of Notion, the divine being ap- 
pears in another light. The Notion is subjective, objective, and the 
Idea. The Idea is the highest logical definition of the Absolute ; the 
Supreme Notion is the Absolute Idea ; therefore the Supreme Notion 
is the Absolute. God is a being of ideas, supreme, lofty, controlling, 
which is a Platonic conception in a new guise. 

Hegel also finds it convenient to ornament his idealism with 
Christian truth, for he affirms that Christ is the internal idea exter- 
nalized ; in other w T ords, that Christ is externally what God is inter- 
nally ; or, as Paul phrases it, Christ was " God manifest in the flesh." 
Perhaps Hegelians will resist this interpretation of their master, as 
being entirely too Scriptural and over-theological; but certain it is 
that the three advocates of idealism herein mentioned made an ex- 
haustive attempt to harmonize it with Christianity ; hence, the theo- 
logical bias of the highest idealism. 

But idealism, even in its refined form, failed of its purpose ; it did 
not unite with Christianity; it did not reveal God. According to 
Kant, God is indemonstrable by pure reason ; according to Fichte, he 
is the infinite subject ; according to Schelling, the infinite mind ; ac- 
cording to Hegel, the process of absolute being. None of these is a 
demonstration ; none even a satisfactory definition of the Absolute, or 
the Eternal God. 

VI. The philosophy of Kelativity was inaugurated by Sir William 
Hamilton, who, expounding it with singular clearness and force, and 
yet in a contradictory way, conceived that the Absolute is unknow- 
able. Reasoning from the law of causation, he demonstrated the 
existence of a First Cause ; reasoning from the law of relativity, he 
concluded the First Cause is unknowable. The law of relativity is, 
substantially, that knowledge is conditioned upon relations, and 
therefore no object or being aloof from felation can be known. Re- 



266 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

specting physical objects, we know them in their relations, as a tree 
is known to exist in its relation to the earth, gravity, moisture, sun- 
light. We do not consider any object separate from fixed or accidental 
relationships, for outside of relationship we find nothing. Now, is 
God related or unrelated? If it is shown that he sustains relations, 
which are recognized by finite minds, then he too is knowable ; but 
if he is outside of all relation, then he is outside of human knowl- 
edge. Hamilton's Deity is an unrelated, unconditioned being ; there- 
fore, unknowable. But God certainly exists in relation to cause and 
effect; the universe is the image of his thought, the work of his 
hands, the effect of his causative agency; he enters into relations, 
because he acts, thinks, wills, creates, preserves, and governs; and 
thinking, acting, preserving, and governing imply close relationships. 
An unrelated God is a do-nothing God, an inglorious idler ; a related 
deity is a necessary postulate of any deity at all. An unrelated 
deity is, indeed, unthinkable ; but such a nondescript deity can only 
be found in a false philosophy. 

In order to strengthen the law of relativity in its application to a 
nescience of the divine being, Hamilton asserts that thought itself is 
limited by the conditioned; "to think is to condition," or to roam 
within limits ; but the infinite is beyond limitation, and must be un- 
thinkable. Still Hamilton breaks his unbreakable law by thinking 
of the Infinite, philosophizing on the unconditioned, and declaring his 
greatness. To predicate infinity of the unthinkable involves an exer- 
cise of thought, and in a particular and logical manner ; for, unless 
one know the difference between the finite and the infinite, one can 
not predicate infinity of any thing. According to Hamilton, we 
know that the unthinkable, the unrelated, the unknowable, is infinite ; 
but infinite in what? In extent? in wisdom? in power? In some- 
thing, surely. If by finite we mean limitation, by infinite we must 
mean unlimited — unlimited in power, wisdom, goodness. Certainly 
this is knowledge worth knowing. 

Again, respecting the universe, Hamilton maintains with rare 
strength that it had an absolute commencement, or we must predicate 
of it an infinite non-commencement ; a beginning it had, or eternal 
existence must be accepted. To assume no beginning is to assume 
an absurdity. The regression of an infinite series of causes is not 
only bewildering, but also perplexingly absurd, for it is less difficult 
to believe in a created than in a self-originating universe. This, 
however, implies a Creator, which Hamilton foresaw and conceded; 
but he perpetrated one of those contradictions for which he was 
famous in alleging that mind, though compelled to choose one or the 
other, is unable to conceive of either. "The Infinite and the Abso- 



LA W OF ASSOCIA TION. 267 

lute," says he, "'are only the names of two counter imbecilities of 
the human mind;" namely, absolute commencement and eternal 
existence. 

Hamilton's practical and ethical deductions were superior to his 
philosophy. Urging, in accordance with the law of relativity, that 
the Absolute is unrelated and inconceivable, he admitted the neces- 
sity of faith in the Deity. " We must believe in the infinity of God." 
Faith in the unknowable is as prominent in Hamilton as faith in the 
knowable is prominent in Christian theology. Like Jacobi's, it is a 
faith-philosophy. Without knowing God, we may believe in him ! 
Unthinkable as he is, we may trust him! To those whose faith is 
founded on a partial knowledge of God obtained from revelation and 
through regeneration, this doctrine of faith without knowledge has 
the likeness of a great superstition, which even fetich-worshipers 
have never entertained. 

What is the basal feature of this philosophy? Hamilton was an 
empirical psychologist, denying the knowableness of reals, of exist- 
ence, of being, of substance, and confining knowledge to phenomena 
and their relations. It is the old sensationalism in a new form, made 
legitimate by philosophical legislation, and heralded as the beacon- 
light in the darkness of the nineteenth century. The affirmation of 
the law of relativity is more plausible than the denial of innate ideas ; 
but Hamilton's conclusion is as destructive of theism as Locke's 
famous proverb. The one philosophy as the other is a denial to the 
mind of the capability of apprehending or conceiving the Absolute, 
attributing to man an intellectual imbecility which forbids acquaint- 
ance with any thing beyond the visible, the actual, the phenomenal. 
Hamilton banishes God from thought ; Comte went a step further, and 
banished him from existence. 

VII. The philosophy of Associationalism, dealing less with meta- 
physical problems than pessimism or idealism, renders in its final 
proclamations an adverse decision respecting the theistic hypothesis. 
Inasmuch as the mind often acts as by a law of association — e. g., as 
in memory an object will suggest the scenes that ocurred in its vi- 
cinity, as Bunker Hill the Revolutionary contest — it is in'ferred that 
the mind's action is wholly governed by this law, that all its thoughts 
are trains of ideas suggested by association. This being the case, the 
mind acts mechanically and from necessity, and must be without in- 
dependence or originality ; for, if thought is the result of association, 
a mental operation, independent of association, is impossible. The 
thoughts, too, form "a compound in which the separate elements are 
no more distinguishable, as such, than oxygen and hydrogen in 
water." This law of association, says Schwegler, has been made as 



268 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

conspicuous in philosophy as gravitation in nature, its chief advo- 
cates having been Hartley, James Mill, John S. Mill, and Alexander 
Bain. Hartley was a physician, who first taught that mental action 
is explainable by the vibrations of brain-matter, a theory indorsed 
by Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, who transmitted it to John S. 
Mill, who formulated it anew, and to Alexander Bain, who heads the 
list of living psychologists. 

Important as other questions are, we will now inquire into its re- 
lation to the problem of the First Cause. Its relation is apparent in 
its theoretical conception of man, which allows him an automatic 
existence, whose soul is deprived of an immortal nature, whose 
whole life is purely and exclusively mechanical. As it respects im- 
mortality, it is in the line of materialism ; as it respects the origin 
of human knowledge, it is in the line of sensationalism ; as it respects 
the Deity, it is in the line of positivism. A mechanically acting 
mind is incapable of discerning the relations of things, of probing 
until their origin is gained, of understanding being or God. To an 
associationalist the Deity, if not mythical, is inscrutable and incon- 
ceivable. The younger Mill held with Comte that the doctrine of 
causation signified nothing more than a succession of events, in which 
case it could not suggest a First Cause. Causation is not anticipatory 
or prophetic of a First Cause. Associationalism, therefore, is meta- 
physical mechanism, or mechanical metaphysics, robbing man of 
spirituality, thought of independence, and God of existence. This 
Bain calls a "guarded or qualified materialism;" this, we admonish 
the reader, is the quicksand of atheism. 

VIII. We approach, now, the last form of materialistic philos- 
ophy, namely, Spencerianism, a form of associationalism, and yet 
distinct from it in that its ground-plan is evolution. Herbert Spen- 
cer, like Bain, holds that the laws of thought may be reduced to one 
law — namely, association — but that the process by which progress 
takes place is evolution. Though Spencer insists that his system 
makes neither for materialism nor idealism, it is difficult to see how 
it can be separated from its consequences, any more than a blow 
can be separated from the bruise it inflicts. 

In its relation to the First Cause, Spencer, as if in humiliation, 
confesses that that is a separate problem, and that God is unknowable 
and unthinkable. He confounds the unknowable and the unex- 
plainable ; he sees contradiction in the idea of the absolute and the 
infinite, and repudiates the doctrine of self-existence. Unfortunately 
for the truth, he has been apparently strengthened by Dean Mansel, 
who declares that God's spirit and God's ways are incognoscible ; but 
the Dean does not mean to be understood in the sense in which he is 



EVOLUTION. 269 

interpreted. Hitherto, the belief among theologians has been that 
God is incomprehensible, but not inconceivable or unthinkable. 
Theology has maintained that God is an intelligent personality, the 
Absolute Being, incomprehensible because of magnitude, magnifi- 
cence, infinity, but knowable through the three-fold revelation of a 
written Word, a divine incarnation, and the outpouring of his own 
Spirit. Evolution can not evolve God from its materials, finds him 
not in the universe, declares him not necessary to it, traces not his un- 
seen paths in the fields of existence, and so considers him outside the 
pale of human knowledge. The trend of evolution is toward atheism. 
Hamilton recovered himself from the fatal inclination of his philoso- 
phy by declaring that the unknowable God must be believed ; Dean 
Mansel pronounces in favor of faith in the incomprehensible God ; 
but Spencer uplifts the Deity first beyond knowledge, then beyond 
thought, then beyond faith. What is this but atheism? Consistent 
product of evolution, but impious, withering, soul-blasting black- 
ness ; this is the outcome. Spencer is the Diagoras of the nine- 
teenth century. However, he is not a professed atheist ; he is better 
than his system. He gives us a cobble-stone philosophy ; not the 
philosophy of the stars; not the philosophy of Being, of Power, of 
Substance ; but the philosophy of stone. Man is a sculptured figure, 
a piece of marble, not a personality, not a spirituality. God is no- 
where ; there is no God. 

Evolution is the latest form of the philosophy of ignorance, a 
self-confessed impotent system of speculative thought, unable to find 
the ground of existence, denying, in fact, that there is any ground 
outside of itself, making no explanation of the unexplained, offering 
no conception of the inconceivable, no knowledge of the unknowable. 
Thus, after a candid survey of eight systems of philosophic inquiry, 
representing all shades of metaphysical attempts at solving the great 
problem, we find none adequate to the demonstration of the colossal 
principle in the universe ; none is sufficient to reveal the First Cause, 
or pronounce the incommunicable name of Jehovah. 

Not one system has lifted us to Sinai's top ; not one ushered us 
into the presence of him whose footfalls echo in the storm, whose 
breath is felt in the hurricane or dew; not one has placed the 
human hand in the divine and unclasped the grip of power ; not one 
has brought us face to face with the Infinite. Idealism mystified 
him ; Positivism denied him ; Hamiltonianism believed in him, but 
as one believes in the center of the earth ; Evolution turned him out 
beyond space, and bade him never return. The answer of modern 
philosophy to the inquiry, Is there a God ? is yea and nay ; yea, but 
we can know nothing of him ; nay, for he does not exist. 



270 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Plainly, a mountain of error must be shaken down, or it will 
bury forever the first truth of God. In opposition to Empirical Phi- 
losophy we proclaim the Absolute from 'phenomena alone; in opposi- 
tion to Positivism, the First Cause may be predicated on the principle 
of causation alone ; in opposition to the "Common-sense" philosophy, 
faith in God may be grounded in the contents of consciousness or rational 
intuition; in opposition to Pessimism, a personal, conscious Will may 
be affirmed from its historic manifestation in a superintending Providence ; 
in opposition to Idealism, a subjective Absolute, a personal God may 
be declared as the primary truth of religion ; in opposition to Hamilton's 
unknowable Unconditioned, we proclaim the knowable Conditioned; in 
opposition to the unknowable of Associationalism we proclaim the 
knowable of History and Religion ; and in opposition to the unthink- 
able of Evolution, we proclaim the thinkable of Reason and Revelation. 

The gravity of the problem increases with the failure of Phi- 
losophy to solve it, and the responsibility of those who affirm the the- 
istic hypothesis, and especially of those who accept the Christian idea 
of the Absolute, is profound and burdensome. It would be legiti- 
mate to employ the theistic idea as a working hypothesis in account- 
ing for history and nature ; for the scientist, in his searchings, usually 
begins with hypothesis, and can not deny it to those of an opposite 
faith ; but at once to assume the divine existence or posit it- on 
a priori grounds, would be unphilosophical, and virtually a begging 
of the question. Prof. Samuel Harris teaches that "we can not 
know a priori what the Absolute Being is ;" to assume his existence, 
therefore, would be subversive of rational processes, and destructive 
of our knowledge of certainties. At the same time, it is confessed 
that the a posteriori method is not entirely unobjectionable ; we de- 
clare without reserve that the accepted methods for the investigation 
of the First Cause, as a philosophical problem, are utterly and pain- 
fully inadequate, and must some time surrender to an easier and 
more complete rational determination. "To go from reason to God," 
says Cousin, " there is no need of a long journey ;" but Mansel ob- 
jects to the method of rationalism, yet offers nothing as a substi- 
tute, but declares the theistic hypothesis untenable on rational 
grounds. Rationalism is defective as an instrument of investigation ; 
so is apriorism ; so is aposteriorism ; so is intuitionalism ; but rational 
intuitionalism is the highway to truth, and he that travels along 
that road will arrive at the truth. The idea of God, or the fact of 
his existence, and the character of God, or the fact of his attributes, 
must not be confounded, since the first may be established, and the 
second be unknown. To prove the divine existence is not equiva- 
lent to proving the divine attributes. Hitherto, one attribute has 



A SUBJECTIVE ABSOLUTE. 271 

been used as a key to other attributes ; but the process can not be 
justified, for they do not exist in correlation. One does not imply the 
others, any more than one property of a circle implies all the other 
properties. Each must be ascertained in succession. 

Mansel yields entirely too much when he attempts to establish 
that the thought of the Absolute involves self-contradictions, for such 
an Absolute can not exist. By this attempt he opens the path to 
atheism, which he rejects; or compels one to suspect the validity of 
his own rational processes, which we reject. The alternative is, the 
dethronement of God, or the dethronement of reason ; whereas, the 
enthronement of both is a possibility, a necessity to both. If the ex- 
istence of the First Cause is indemonstrable by the reason, then there 
is no place either for the Cause or the Reason in philosophy and re- 
ligion. That the reason may have projected incompetent and un- 
worthy ideas of the divine Being ; that idolatry, pantheism, dualism, 
materialism are among its products, we make no denial ; but this 
does not invalidate the authority of the rational influences of con- 
sciousness or intuition, the certificate of the mind to God's existence. 
Bad poetry does not make against the poetic product in Homer, 
Shakespeare, Milton ; nor the bad astronomy of Ptolemy against the 
correct discoveries of Copernicus and Kepler ; so rationalism, run to 
materialism, is not a sign of the incompetency of the reason to frame 
an incontrovertible argument for the existence of a First Cause. 

We readily grant that many philosophical and theological argu- 
ments in support of the theistic hypothesis are untenable, being rather 
the products of faith than of reason, between which the theologian 
has not carefully enough distinguished, and so he has been van- 
quished, or humiliated, in a contest with his foe. The argument 
from faith is tenable only as it springs from the reason, and even 
then it must occupy relatively a subordinate position. The standing 
argument, that in the idea of correlation is a proof of the ideal God, 
is valuable only as an analogy, and not as absolutely unanswerable. 
The phenomenal may imply the real ; the finite, the infinite ; the 
temporal, the eternal ; the implication may be one of the necessities 
of thought, but it appears more like the trick of logic. It is a ques- 
tion if any one thing implies the other actually, especially if the 
other must be opposite or contradictory. White does not necessarily 
imply black, high is not the proof of low, except as logic may insist 
upon it. The conceptional may not imply the actual ; the condi- 
tioned may not imply the unconditioned ; in fact, we deny the im- 
plication. There is no unconditioned — it is the vain word of 
philosophy, the result of the theory of correlation imposed upon the 
reason. Reason, tortured, traduced, imposed upon, may seem to 



272 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

support a lawful hypothesis, which in the end is found untenable, 
and then a cry is made against reason. Against many so-called 
rational arguments, against laws, theories, hypotheses, often used to 
bolster up the theistic &,ct, there comes a time when reaction sets in, 
and they are abandoned. Hence, reason is at a discount in the 
realm of the highest truth ; but it ought to support the reign of 
Authority, and it will support it as reason grounds itself more and 
more in consciousness, and less and less in speculation. 

In the preceding paragraph we have denied the existence of what 
is called the unconditioned; for, believing in the First Cause, in a 
personal God, it is impossible to conceive of him as unconditinoed. 
An unconditioned Absolute Being is unthinkable, unknowable — does 
not exist. More than one pseudo-absolute may be found in the 
realm of philosophic thought, as the pantheistic absolute, the agnostic 
absolute, the anthropomorphic absolute, all these and more ; but the 
greatest of these, the most contradictory, the self-evidently non-existent, 
is the unconditioned Absolute. Lotze defines being to be something 
that stands in relation, and that out of relation it has no existence. 
In harmony with this thought, Prof. Bowne demonstrates that, con- 
trary to Hegel, pure being can not exist, but must " stand in relation." 
Fichte says, "The ego posits itself," but always in relation. An un- 
conditioned being is an absolute impossibility — impossible even to 
thought, and impossible as an actual existence. 

The first thought of the Absolute is of a related Something ; the 
first idea of a First Cause is of an effect ; the idea of cause contains 
the idea of effect. Reason appropriates and endeavors to interpret 
the related Cause through the relations, finding in the contents of 
the relations the content of the idea of God. Existence without rela- 
tion is non-existence. 

A second conception of the First Cause is its unity ; it can not be 
divided against itself ; it is not self-contradictory, as Mansel affirms, 
for that involves self-destruction. In what the unity of being, or 
the unity of the Absolute, consists, whether unity of motion, unity 
of force, or unity of character, or all three, it is not now important 
to consider. It is enough to recognize the fact of its unity in the 
most general sense. 

A third conception grows out of itself as cause whose content is 
activity, energy, manifested force. Cause is activity. The condition 
of being is energy ; hence manifestation. Philosophy is recognizing 
the law of being in the activity of being, and finds itself capable of 
explaining being by the law of its existence, which is nothing else 
than energy in execution. This really is the highest interpretation 
of Spirit — activity. Activity implies manifestation ; manifestation 



THE ABSOLUTE IS CAUSE. 273 

must be totally different from the activity, or resemble it. If totally 
different, it can not be accounted for ; it must resemble it, therefore ; 
that is, the effect of the cause, which is the manifestation of activity, 
must contain something of the cause. The effect may be spiritual, 
which is a close resemblance, or physical, which is a rude exhibition 
of the operating cause. Man is the spiritual resemblance, nature the 
physical ; in both cases the activity has manifested itself. 

Spinoza taught that God in activity is under a mathematical ne- 
cessity, limited by laws which in themselves are eternal ; but far 
easier is it to believe that they are in subjection to him than that he 
is in bondage to them. The characteristic of man is his freedom ; 
surely the Absolute is as free as his creature. The Absolute as First 
Cause is free in activity, and the author of all methods of activity. 

From this law of activity we determine the Absolute to be Cause. 
There is nothing in the First Cause to show that it is an effect ; there 
is every thing in the effect to show that it had a cause. So the Cause 
stands in relation to effect as antecedent, self-impelling, self-existing, 
and all-sufficient. As First Cause, it must differ from every thing 
else, except so far as, in the manifestation of itself by the law of its 
activity, it imparted somewhat of itself to the manifestation. Resem- 
bling the manifestation, it must possess differentia or characteristics 
which lift it above the things which are its products. The philosopher's 
task at this point is by no means an easy one. Just so long as the 
Absolute may be contemplated by the aid of fixed relations between 
cause and effect, or the law of causality in the universe — just so long 
as the law of activity is predicated as the law of being, and is applied 
to the Absolute, the task, though difficult, may be performed ; but 
when the word "being" must be changed for Person, in whom centers 
activity, and from whom proceeds relations and manifestations, the 
task is almost beyond performance. The designation of the First 
Cause as a Person materialistic philosophy condemns as the gratuitous 
assumption of dogmatic theology ; but to this it must come. The 
Scriptures always represent God as a Person, and, as Mansel says, 
never as a Law ; God is not Relation or Unity or Activity only ; he 
is Personality. He is Unity in Personality ; Activity in Personality. 
He sustains personal relations to man and the universe, and may be 
interpreted in the light of them. An unrelated universe is as great a 
fiction as an unrelated Absolute ; neither exists. A personal God is 
the stumbling-block of philosophy. Spencer, holding to a belief in a 
Creator, so magnifies him beyond all anthropomorphic relations and 
conceptions that he can not be known or understood. He advances 
him beyond the altitude of personality. Personality implies limita- 
tion, according to the genius of philosophy, and is inapplicable to the 

18 



274 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

infinite, which is unlimited. An infinite personality, or rather a per- 
sonal Infinite, is just as consistent as a personal finite ; both are con- 
scious intelligences, both are spiritual activities — the one under limita- 
tion, the other beyond. Tyndall calls the Supreme Activity a Power 
which refuses in his hands to take a personal form, and slips away 
from all " intellectual manipulations." It is a singular faith that 
allows the existence of a Power and denies the existence of a Person- 
ality ; yet such is TyndalTs tentative faith. 

What is God? is a profound question, even after it has been 
settled that he exists. From existence to character the journey is of 
not inconsiderable length, but he will be rewarded who honestly at- 
tempts to make it. Plato's conception of God as the First Cause in 
the organization of the world, though far from being complete, may 
be commended to those who, blind to all the evidence of design in 
the world's organization, have reduced the Deity either to zero or an 
impersonal force. Not at all times clear himself, Plato nevertheless 
supports the theistic hypothesis with more than a conjecture of its 
truthfulness. Modern teachers have descended from the Platonic 
elevation into bogs and caves, sending forth the most dismal proc- 
lamations concerning the world's government and the Supreme Power. 

Hartmann conceives the First Cause to be an unconscious intelli- 
gence, operating in a causal manner, and dreaming away his eternity. 
He is an insensible God ; he is taking an eternal nap or walking in 
his sleep. Spencer concedes intelligence and power, regulated by 
wisdom, to the First Cause ; Hartmann concedes intelligence acting 
automatically and unerringly. The concession apparently relieves 
the conception of an atheistic color. Ludwig Buchner, reckless in 
his daring, eliminates the idea of a personal God from philosophy, as- 
serting what he does not prove, that it is obstructive of man's spir- 
itual, social, and political development, and reduces it to the activity 
of impersonal reason. His task of elimination is somewhat difficult, 
but he plunges into it as Pharaoh into the Red Sea. Oskar Schmidt 
has no room for the theistic idea in his philosophic meditations. On 
the other hand, A. R. Wallace, a Darwinian in belief, supports the 
idea of a personal God as a necessity to the explanation of the uni- 
verse. The Duke of Argyll, it is well known, devoutly recognizes the 
living God. The vibration of philosophic belief touching the theistic 
idea from rank atheism to positive theism is here manifest, showing the 
unsettled state of philosophic thought, and the need of further in- 
quiry and investigation. 

The ground of the theological philosophy is Nature, not Christian- 
ity. To nature let the appeal be made. What is its testimony con- 
cerning the theistic idea? Cato once said, "That God is, all nature 



NATURE'S TESTIMONY TO GOD. 275 

cries aloud." Jacobi has said that " nature conceals God." Both 
Cato and Jacobi are right : Cato respecting the affirmation of nature, 
Jacobi respecting the incompleteness of that affirmation. Nature is 
a revelation, but not a full revelation, of God, and, because of its in- 
completeness, it has been misinterpreted in the interest of material- 
ism, agnosticism, and atheism. Viewed as a whole, the universe is a 
proclamation of God, as the author of it, and as in some sense a re- 
flection of his character. It is plain that the universe had a com- 
mencement, or it had not. If it had no beginning, then matter is 
eternal, and its existence is not a proof of God. The eternity of 
matter displaces the theistic presupposition. If it had a beginning, 
then something originated it, or it was self-originative, which is ab- 
surd. The conception of an eternal universe is even more mysterious 
than the conception of an eternal being, and the conception of a self- 
originating universe is far more absurd than the conception of a being 
who never had a beginning. Suppose the theistic conception is a 
mystery ; the other is an absurdity. Suppose the first is an incom- 
prehensibility ; the second is an inconceivability. 

Admitting a beginning, Herbert Spencer is not satisfied that 
nature is a solemn proof of a personal God ; the uniformity of nature's 
phenomena protests against the rule of a personal being ; nature rules 
itself, and is therefore invariable. It is clear that nature does not re- 
veal God to Spencer ; it conceals him, as Jacobi said. J. S. Mill, 
less cautious in utterance, went so far as to deny perfection to ' ' the 
author and ruler of so clumsily made and capriciously governed a 
creation as this planet and the life of its inhabitants." Either a per- 
sonal God had nothing to do with the planet, or he is involved in its 
imperfections. If nature cries aloud that God is, as Cato said, it 
cries out an imperfect God, according to Mill. 

What, then, is the testimony of Nature ? If it is true that the 
medium through which one sees an object affects the sight of it, in- 
terfering with clear vision in proportion as its opaque, then it is im- 
portant that the medium be transparent or removed entirely, and the 
object be seen without any intermediary substance, if accurate judg- 
ment is finally declared. Looking at an object through glass or water, 
it may be discolored, distorted, appear broken, larger or smaller than it 
actually is, and so not be seen truly. If* one, then, attempt to ob- 
serve the First Cause through Nature, it is conceded that the medium 
will affect the observation ; but whether a distorted view or a strictly 
rational and theistic view will be obtained, will depend upon the 
medium itself, and upon the thoroughness of the observation. Na- 
ture conceals God to the incompetent observer ; it reveals him to the 
friend of God. Whatever may be said of the revelation, it is not 



276 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

anthropomorphic ; it is the voice of the physical universe asserting 
the sovereignty of God, and he that hath an ear may hear it. 

The total power of Nature is too immense for measure ; and while 
it may not be infinite, it is above human calculation ; hence the 
nature-Cause is immensely powerful. In like manner the total wis- 
dom of nature, after deducting the facts which apparently point to 
misrule, appears at least superhuman ; hence the nature-God is su- 
perhumanly wise. The total benevolence of nature is stupendous, 
and, notwithstanding Mill's suspicion of its hollowness, it is in keep- 
ing with a being who has infinite resources ; hence the nature-God is 
benevolent. The total order of nature — that is, its apparent system 
of causal procedure — evokes admiration, and justifies faith in it; 
hence the nature-God is order-loving, order-enforcing. The totalities 
of nature, without reference to the details, affecting observation of 
the First Cause, suggest that the nature-God is powerful, wise, be- 
nevolent, orderly. The totalities are revelations, so far as they are 
of any value at all. 

The medium is rather a help than a hindrance to observation. 
If it wholly obscured the object to be seen, the medium only would 
be seen ; but in this case the medium reveals — does not conceal. It 
is not nature that one sees, but God in nature ; not the medium, but 
the object. Nature qualifies the object just as any other medium 
would ; that is, a medium is obstructive of some light, unless its 
power of transmission is perfect, which is not claimed for nature. It 
is claimed, however, that it is a good medium, even though it refracts 
some of the divine rays. All mediums of observation of the First 
Cause are open to this objection, and hence a mediumistic result must 
necessarily be an imperfect result. The First Cause we apprehend 
correctly in this way, so far as we apprehend it at all, but imperfectly. 
If God, apprehended imperfectly, appears glorious, how would he 
appear if apprehended without a medium? Nature is the proof, as 
Cato says, that God is. 

By the materialistic philosopher the anthropomorphic conception 
of the First Cause is regarded untenable, since man is the medium 
of observation ; but, if the nature-medium is a philosophical ground 
of observation, surely the man-medium can not be ignored. The 
trend of the nature-medium is to materialism ; the trend of the man- 
medium is to a personal God. This explains the readiness of the 
materialist to turn from man to nature. Humanity, in its historic 
development and individual character, exhibits a panorama of attri- 
butes that nature does not display, and new ideas of God find utter- 
ance in every man. The faculties of memory, conscience, judgment, 
volition, perception, and cognition, the power of thought and reason, 



USES OF REASON. 277 

suggest that the First Cause is intellectual, moral, spiritual ; for what 
is in man must be in the Cause. This heightens our view of the in- 
finite God. The nature-God is the God of power, wisdom, benevo- 
lence, goodness ; the man-God is the God of intellect, having a moral 
nature, being true, eternal, ever-acting Spirit. If the medium of 
observation is obstructive, then our apprehension of the First Cause 
as intellectual, moral, and spiritual, is far below the truth; that is, 
it is infinitely intellectual, moral, and spiritual. The anthropomorphic 
conception of God, instead of being limited and unreliable, as is 
charged by a certain school, is the basis or medium of infinite views 
of his character and sovereignty. Imperfect as is the view, it is ele- 
vating; and limited as is our apprehension of the Infinite, it is 
progressive and comforting. 

A complete philosophic conclusion, however, will not rest upon 
mediumistic suggestions, but will advance, if it can, to a knowledge 
of the Absolute without the mesmeric aids of nature and anthropology. 
Can it go to such heights? Can it rise to a clear, rational perception 
of the First Cause by reason alone? Homer relates that, when 
Pallas Athene blew the mist from the eyes of Diomedes, he saw the 
gods in battle. In a greater book than the Iliad, we read that Elisha 
prayed, and his servant's eyes were opened, so that he saw the mount- 
ains of Samaria full of celestial chariots and horsemen — a real dis- 
play of the supernatural. Perhaps reason's eye, if opened, might 
discern, back of all phenomena, back of the visible, the invisible 
Power that produced all things ; perhaps a touch of the eye-ball by a 
single ray of light might reveal the First Cause in supreme command 
of all the causes now recognized as operating and controlling in the 
universe. We believe in the power of the reason, under a spiritual 
quickening, to recognize the Supreme Power, and, without violence 
to the laws of thought, to satisfy itself of the existence and character 
of the personal Absolute. 

Including in the Reason the intuitions and all the moral faculties 
and yearnings of the soul, it proceeds to demonstrate the problem in 
the following manner : First, it attaches supreme significance to the 
law ojf causality as manifested in the universe of matter and being. 
This is not the place to vindicate or even point out the contents of 
the law ; but, recognizing it in full operation as a universal principle, 
the human mind, acting under the same law, steps backward through 
the multiplicity of antecedents and consequents until it reaches an 
initial antecedent, and then it stops, and stops forever. The alterna- 
tive is an initial antecedent or an endless series of causes. The latter 
is absurd, since it finally involves uncaused causes. An uncaused or 
the First Cause is rational ; but uncaused causes are inconsistent with 



278 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the notion of a First Cause. A non-beginning is not half so satisfac- 
tory as a beginning. The law of causation conducts backward to an 
initial cause, and stops. Mental satisfaction is one result ; consistent, 
effective logic is another ; explanation of the universe is another, for, 
given the First and second causes without number may be marshaled 
into activity; religion, human responsibility, sacred institutions, 
Churches, prayers, necessarily follow; a sense of Fatherhood in the 
First Cause rests upon the world, and darkness flees away. 

If the law of causality, as applied to the defense of the theistic 
notion, involves an endless metaphysical speculation, whose conclu- 
sions can satisfy only because based on certain presuppositions which 
materialism ignores, Reason may employ another method, or other 
facts too patent to be denied, in support of the common idea. The 
preservation of the universe, or the law of Continuity, is as great a 
mystery as, and certainly no less a fact than, its organization, or the 
existence of the law of Causality. In fact, the law of Continuity, 
securing uninterrupted duration to the universe, is even more mar- 
velous than the law of causality which produced it. In the search 
for causes, however, this is likely to be forgotten. In a theoretical 
sense, it might be admitted that the universe required an originator, 
but that its preservation is due to the laws imparted to it by the 
originator, who retired from the government of the world as soon as 
he organized it, authorizing its future existence by virtue of its own 
laws and resources, or committing it to some inferior but superhuman 
power that would look after it. If an organized world require an 
organizer, a preserved, continuous world requires a Preserver. To 
establish that the organizer and preserver are one and the same is an 
advance over the materialistic negation of a personal government in 
the world. God was ; God is. If compelled to accept the Organizer, 
the materialist utterly refuses recognition of a Preserver. 

The spectacle of the universe in utmost harmony throughout its 
vast domains, all its forces united in the bonds of cordial sympathy 
and working for the common end of order and progress, all its king- 
doms maintaining their original lines of difference, without trespass 
one upon another, worlds and systems of worlds traveling noiselessly 
toward an appointed goal and shining perpetually, must be as wonder- 
ful to the higher powers as to men. True it is that imperfection is 
charged against the cosmic systems ; the pessimist reiterates his plati- 
tudes of misgovernment, as did Mill, and the materialist protests 
against the infirmities and struggles of men, as does Hackel ; but no 
one can deny the stupendous fact of the world's preservation. De- 
struction is not the goal of the universe, or at least the facts are 
against such a supposition. What this has required, what vast 



THE LAW OF CONTINUITY. 279 

expenditures of power, what constant watchfulness to prevent collisions, 
what interpositions of wisdom, just how to balance the universe so 
that it shall not shipwreck itself in the spatial sea, no one can esti- 
mate or reveal. Yet, in spite of possible collision of worlds, in spite 
of possible conflagrations so vast that once started the universe might 
be reduced to an ash-heap, in spite of possible vacillations of climate 
that might destroy the human race, in spite of possible relationships 
to the sun that changed in the least might extinguish the planets 
or deprive them of light, the world moves on without a jar, and is 
preserved. So marvelous an arrangement, resulting in the perpetuity 
of the universe, it is difficult to account for, except on the hypothesis 
of a present personal superintending agency. Atomism comes not to 
our relief here. The potency of law is almost a fiction-phrase, unless 
explained. Law is life, law is power ; but only as the law of life, or 
the law of Continuity, is breathed into the great universal mass, and 
kept there by the Sovereign who is life himself, can the preservation 
of the universe be explained. Preservation is the proof of per- 
sonal agency. 

Reason, building up a faith in a divine personality on the impreg- 
nable basis of the laws of causality and continuity, or the stupendous 
facts of organization and preservation, finds additional strength for 
its assurance in an inquiry concerning the purpose of the universe. 
Lying back of organization and preservation is the stupendous motive 
governing both ; and motive is the credential of personality. It is 
not so much what the motive is that underlies the universe, as whether 
it exists by reason of a motive, whether it implies a motive at all. 
If the spirit of purpose is abroad in the universe, stamped upon 
every orb, beaming in every law, and bursting out of the ages as 
they pass along, then the creation and preservation of the universe 
may be justified ; but not otherwise. Materialism scorns the teleo- 
logical proof of personality, because it is conclusive. The law of de- 
sign in the universe is as conspicuous as the law of causality and the 
law of continuity, and the three agree in a demonstration of an 
Absolute Personality. If reason require a cause for things, it equally 
demands the end or purpose of things. Just here the distinction, 
usually clear, between efficient and final cause, fades away, enabling 
one to see in the efficient the final cause; that is, the final purpose 
of an act becomes the efficient or controlling cause in the act. 
Reason requires both ; one implies the other. It is not enough to 
say that cause implies effect ; it implies a designed effect. Again, the 
constitution of nature involves a purpose or end for itself; else why 
its order, beauty, symmetry, harmony? Why not disorder, accident, 
revolution, disharmony, absence of adaptation? The exceptional dis- 



280 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

orders are not numerous enough to overthrow the law of design ; the 
law of causality and the law of continuity run the gauntlet of excep- 
tions, but they run it in safety. Suppose the spleen is an organ 
without a known function ; it does not contradict the general idea of 
end or function in the human system. Even studying final cause as 
merely a preponderating influence, and not as a universal law, it is 
true to say that, balancing chaotic evidences with cosmical order, the 
average is on the side of the latter. For, suppose some things in 
nature appear to be without design — this is all that one dare affirm ; 
as nature on the whole exhibits design, the conclusion must be in 
favor of the latter. Remembering, too, that it requires more knowl- 
edge than man at present possesses to warrant him in assuming that 
any thing that exists is barren of purpose, any argument built on 
man's ignorance can hardly have the weight of a rational conjecture. 
Once it was said the thistle is without an excuse for being; but 
in recent years it has been converted into paper, proving its utility. 
The failure to find a purpose in some things is not so much a proof 
of the absence of purpose as it is a reflection on man's ignorance. 
We repeat, then, that the constitution of nature involves purpose. 

The final step is that nature is the prophecy of a purpose which 
it is steadily working out, and is making visible to those who have 
eyes to see purpose at all. Von Baer was fond of saying that nature 
is striving toward an end, as if it is alive with purpose, as if it un- 
derstands the object, the reason of its being, and is consciously press- 
ing forward to its accomplishment. The expression is strictly 
philosophical. Nature is rushing on with a speed incalculable to a 
positive achievement, hindered at times by the apparent antagonism 
of its diverse forces, but harmonizing at last in the unity of a uni- 
versal design. 

What the end is, reason may not fully discover ; but the province 
of philosophy is in great part fulfilled when it establishes the exist- 
ence of end. That settled, as we think it has been, in the affirmative, 
it may seek to ascertain the precise end itself. The precise end of 
nature even theistic philosophers themselves have not fully indicated ; 
they are not agreed what it is ; but any end at all is proof of per- 
sonal supervision. If the end is that the First Cause may be studied 
in physical achievements; if it is the expression of supernatural 
power ; if it is to root moral ideas in concrete forms ; if it is to es- 
tablish the idea of God ; while these ends may be of different value, 
they reveal purpose, and purpose is the key to personality. Mr. 
Mivart so interprets organic nature; but the London Spectator denies 
the sufficiency of design in nature to establish the existence of an in- 
finite intelligence. "Design proves intelligence of a limited kind, 



THE THEISTIC CONCEPTION. 281 

not of an infinite kind," says the Spectator ; but we must distinguish 
between the design of the details of natural things, and the design of 
the universe as a whole, a distinction entirely misapprehended by the 
London writer. An insect's wing, however well formed and adapted 
to a specific purpose, can not be quoted in proof of an infinite intel- 
ligence, for the works of man often eclipse, the works of nature in 
the exhibition of design. The locomotive, the telegraph, the tele- 
phone, the steamship, the printing-press, exhibits more design than a 
thousand things in nature, proving intelligence, but not infinite in- 
telligence ; so design in the small things in nature, or in great things 
taken separately, may only prove ''intelligence of a limited kind;" 
but the design of the universe as a whole is very different from the 
functional uses of organs, or the specific purpose of planets. In the 
one we see a limited intelligence, which, however, implies personality ; 
in the other an infinite intelligence, implying an infinite personality. 

By a rational interpretation of the laws of causation, continuity, 
and design, faith receives unequivocal support in a personality, self- 
endowed with all-mightiness, infinite wisdom, perfect benevolence, all 
concreted in self-existence, without beginning or end. This philosoph- 
ical conclusion is in accord with the purest theistic conception, and it 
is only by violence that they can be separated. 

But the purely philosophical basis of the theistic conception, con- 
clusive enough at least to those who are in sympathy with it, lacks 
what one may term vitality or sufficiency of inner force. Granite-like 
as it is, it is cold, unattractive, without contagious influence. Some- 
thing more is wanted — the conception needs the baptism of fire. If, 
obscuring its philosophical form, it assumes to be a semi-religious 
truth, or exchanges its metaphysical dialectic for a religious teaching, 
interest in it will increase. The theistic conception is, in its very na- 
ture, more than a philosophical theorem. The trend of the latter is 
to the former. The mind in its outgoing relaxes its grip on the ex- 
clusively philosophical, and gently grasps the religious, the whole 
process being philosophical, for the end of philosophy is religion. 
This intermediate and progressive state from one to the other arises 
philosophically from the law of development which obtains in the his- 
tory of mind, and religiously from the manifestations of Providence, 
which religion more than philosophy is inclined to appropriate and 
interpret in its own interest. 

The defect in the philosophical basis is its pantheistic view of the 
universe, including man as well as God, mind as well as matter, and 
so confounding things that are essentially separate. Its ground, or 
the content of its theory, is nature, with its forms, forces, and laws ; 
but, incontrovertible as is the argument from nature, philosophy 



282 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

weakens itself by confining its view to nature, as if it were all of 
existence. Identifying nature with the universe of being, its conclu- 
sion is intended to be universal when it is only particular, and so it 
lacks in completeness and sufficiency. 

Development in nature, according to a pre-established order, is a 
philosophical ground of belief in the Absolute ; development in hu- 
man history, according to a pre-established providential plan, is a re- 
ligious ground for faith in a Personal God. This is the dividing 
line between philosophy and religion — evolution in nature and evolu- 
tion in history. Materialistic philosophy deals primarily with the 
fixed, the permanent, regarding the variable as an incident of the 
permanent ; hence, nature is its field. The manifestations of life, the 
variable products of causes, laws, and forces, and the outgrowths of 
human history, it makes too little account of in its theories, interpret- 
ing the whole from the underground basis of matter. Religion par- 
sues the opposite method, viewing the universe from the stand-point 
of man, and interpreting nature accordingly. Nature explains all, 
says the materialist; man explains all, says the rational intuitionalist, 
or theistic advocate. One opens the front-door, the other the back- 
door ; both should meet at the altars of the temple of truth. Philos- 
ophy scans natural evolution ; religion, historic manifestation. His- 
tory is quite as much a development as nature ; but it is the variable, 
while nature is the fixed, with qualifications. The execution of tKe 
historic plan, whatever the plan is, with its constantly fluctuating forces, 
its variable elements, is even more wonderful than the execution of nature's 
purpose, underlying which are fixed forces and laws. He who holds the 
winds in his fists must be as strong as He who brought forth the 
mountains. The Ruler of such an inconstant thing as Time must be 
as great as the maker of globes. History is in the stupenduous scale 
an even balance for nature ; the former proves as much as the latter. 
Nature may strive toward an end ; but history is pregnant with a 
vital, sovereign purpose, namely, the elevation of man. If the doc- 
trine of teleology is at all relevant or tenable, it has strong confirma- 
tion in human history, where the resultant of complicated and 
apparently antagonistic forces is the gradual advancement of the 
race. This is philosophical in its aspect; for the "survival of the 
fittest" is but the expression of the historic plan, and the ideal of 
human life. This plan is all the more wonderful since it is not self- 
executing, nor the result of an administration of law as in nature ; 
for volitional, that is, concurrent and opposing forces, are vitally 
related to it, and depend upon personal agency for harmony, devel- 
opment, fulfillment. The nature-plan, the materialist avows, is self- 
executing, that is, independent of personal supervision ; but the his- 



CONCEPTION OF THE FIRST CAUSE. 283 

toric plan shrivels without personal execution. Hence, historic de- 
velopment is a profound proof of a personal God. The nature-God 
and the historic-God, the philosophic and the religious God, are one 
and the same, so proclaimed by religion, but rejected by materialism. 
The advance of the religious conception over the philosophical is 
therefore apparent. 

The way is now prepared for a discussion of the problem of the 
First Cause in another aspect, or that which is apparently farthest re- 
moved from the philosophic stand-point, namely, the religious repre- 
sentation of God. However, the representation is strictly philosophical ; 
for the religious idea is philosophical in essence, and belongs to the 
category of particular philosophic primaries. A true philosophical 
conception of the First Cause has logically a religious termination or 
accent. In spite of itself philosophy has a religious brogue. "Thy 
speech bewrayeth thee." 

In this tracing of the religious representation we shall not be 
aided by the dicta of theologians, the opinions of the Christian fathers, 
or the pronunciations of the Church, for these are entirely outside of 
the specific view here to be opened. Justin Martyr ascribes shape to 
God ; Clement of Alexandria denies him shape and name ; Origen 
pronounces him an "incorporeal unity." Not on such opinions do 
we rise to conceptions of the Absolute, but in the study of the royal 
facts undergirding human existence, which point unerringly to the 
Infinite. 

The first religious intimation of God we notice, is the religious 
intuition in man. The day has passed when this can be satired out 
of existence, or reduced to an ephemeral emotion or an intellectual 
sentiment. Theodore Parker allows an intuitive sense of God, and 
Spencer can not escape from the intimation of consciousness, which 
presupposes, logically, the existence of God. Prof. Samuel Harris 
observes that "the development of man's consciousness of himself in 
his relation to the world is the development of his consciousness of 
God." The argument from consciousness, the reason, and the intui- 
tions, is absolutely triumphant over every form of skepticism, and is 
a standing rebuke of, and a challenge to, agnosticism to proceed. In 
a religious sense, the religious intuition or reason is God in man. It 
is the divine idea taking root in humanity ; it is the proleptic sign 
of God, unfolding itself in consciousness and in history. Like 
language, or music, or art, it is native to man, a primitive datum of 
the consciousness, the ground of thought, of knowledge, of science, 
of religion. The divine idea is unmistakably voiced by human 
nature in its great need of divine help. It is more than a feeling ; 
it is the divine personality awaking man to his own personality. 



284 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

This is evidenced in its universality, for all men, the illiterate and 
the cultured, the barbarian and the civilized, the pagan and the 
Christian, the atheist and the theist, possess the ineradicable mark 
on forehead and soul, and temples of worship and religious ideas and 
forms are the product. An explanation of the religious intuition 
with its entire contents it is not necessary to give ; for, as it is funda- 
mental to personality, the first duty of philosophy is to recognize it, 
and explanation then may follow. Consciousness, or intuition, the 
mother of the theistic notion, can not be accounted for by evolution. 
It exists without evolution ; hence, the data of consciousness are not 
dependent for existence on the law of evolution. In this way the 
Absolute impresses the thought of himself in a permanent form upon 
humanity ; it is the only way to do it, and the human mind can 
sooner annihilate itself than shake off* the great conviction. By as 
much as the historic is in advance over the natural proof of the 
Absolute, by so much the intuitional is in advance of the historic 
basis of faith in the Infinite. The proof, therefore, is cumulative. 

Interpreting the intuitional anxiety for God by a strictly scientific 
method, or according to the principle of correlation, which in sub- 
stance is that a demand of nature indicates a supply, as hunger im- 
plies food, and love of truth implies truth, it is evident that the 
religious basis of theism is as invulnerable as the philosophical. 
Aristotle declares that the intuitive reason is the source of first 
principles. Unless the contents of consciousness are entirely mis- 
leading, and the intuitional suggestion a piece of self-mockery, in 
which case philosophy can have no foundation whatever, we may 
interpret the demands of the moral nature as significant of an 
adequate supply. Either the intuition is a deceptive play of the 
emotions, or its meaning must be found in the accepted law of 
correlation, which points to religion, or the idea of a personal God. 
The correlative of the religious intuition is a personal infinite, or 
nothing. It can not be one of many possible beings or realities ; it is 
the highest or nothing. It is not asserted that the intuitional sense 
looks immediately for gratification to the Christian religion, for that 
is not involved in the issue, but that it does point to the highest re- 
ligious conception of God, which is enough to warrant faith in 
his existence. 

Singularly enough, the Bible writers do not attempt to demon- 
strate the existence of the Absolute, it either being assumed as a 
rational inference from consciousness, or revealed by direct spiritual 
communication. One is as authentic as the other. Intuition is as 
reliable as inspiration. 

Neither, taken singly, is the highest or safest source of knowl- 



ATTRIBUTES OF THE ABSOLUTE. 285 

edge, but in combination, the consciousness spiritualized, the intui- 
tional reason quickened, inspired, the resultant knowledge is infallible. 
Inspired intuition is the highest form of knowledge of the absolute. We live 
in two worlds, the physical and the spiritual : the physical presses upon 
us, the result is sensation ; the spiritual presses upon us, the result 
is inspiration. The vision of God through the spiritualized intuitions 
is complete or not, as the spiritualizing process is perfect or deficient. 
There must be a faculty for apprehending or perceiving the Infinite, 
or he can not be perceived. This faculty is consciousness under inspi- 
ration. In its final graspings the consciousness goes beyond truths 
to Personality, in whom they center, and from whom they issue. It 
is the soul's vision of God. The purest philosophy stops with 
truths ; Religion drops on its knees before Personality. The one points 
to God ; the other goes to him. 

The philosophy of the First Cause, however, is not at variance 
with the religious representations, so far as it concerns the conspicu- 
ous attributes of God. Singularly, they are at one touching these, 
though divided as to method, and as to the fact of a personal 
Absolute. If there is an Absolute at all, philosophy agrees with Re- 
ligion in the recognition of certain characteristics, among which we 
name the following : The invisibility of the Absolute ; the unity of 
his nature ; the omnipotence of his energy ; the spirituality of his 
substance ; the omniscience of his vision. To be sure, the philosophical 
conception of these attributes is not exactly the religious conception 
of the same, but the difference is not one of antagonism. As to 
spirituality, even pessimism allows that the Supreme Power, what- 
ever it is, is a Somewhat different from organic, material substance — it 
is Spirit, or Will, or Reason, an intellectual energy, if nothing else. 
The Biblical conception of God is that of a conscious intelligence, 
and at all events a Somewhat totally different from the non-ego. Our 
conclusion respecting the First Cause is reached. Step by step have 
we proceeded from the lowest philosophical suspicion, to the highest 
religious or spiritual conception of the Absolute as an eternal Person, 
clothed with corresponding attributes, the Creator, Preserver, and 
Ruler of the worlds ; and here the task ends. Religion has not framed 
our philosophy of the First, but philosophy confirms our religion of 
the First. Nature, Reason, History, Consciousness, and Religion unite 
in the proclamation of a First Cause, always existing, supernatural, 
infinite ; a Cause adequate to the universe ; a Cause conscious, per- 
sonal, eternal. That First Cause we call God. 



286 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE FINAL CAUSE 

LUDWIG BIJCHNER has discovered that the vindication of the 
teleological principle involves the overthrow of the mechanical 
conception of the universe, while Prof. Huxley is not certain but 
that one may be a teleologist and a materialist at the same time ; at 
least, he urges that the one view does not exclude the other. Biichner's 
position is the more consistent, for teleology and materialism are in- 
compatible, as will appear in these discussions. 

Plato did not elaborate a theory of causality or suggest an ex- 
planation of nature that is satisfactory to the philosophic sense of 
modern times. He held that two causes were involved in the 
organization of world-types ; viz., the Necessary and the Divine; 
but this is superficial, for, while it admits the presence of a creative 
energy and the fixedness of nature's laws, it does not enter into an 
exposition of design in nature or reveal the basal motive of the 
universe. Aristotle censured Plato for ignoriDg both efficient and 
final causes, and, taking the subject in hand himself, he formulated a 
system of causes which for completeness can not be excelled ; but it is 
not clear that it does not include more than properly belongs to it. 
He reduced all causes, as if there could be more than one, to four: 
namely, material cause, or the substance, or matter itself; formal 
cause, or the pattern, after which a Thing is made or the form which 
it assumes; efficient cause, or the power that produces change or 
motion ; final cause, or that on account of which a Thing is, other- 
wise the end or purpose of a Thing. The words "final cause," he 
did not originate nor even employ, but he speaks of the "end" of a 
Thing, or of Nature, which led the school-men to frame and adopt 
"final cause" as the expression of Aristotle's idea. 

It is not our purpose to investigate these distinctions, arbitrarily 
made as they were, or to dwell upon the relation of each "cause" 
to the great problems in philosophy and religion ; but, separating 
1 ' final cause " from its associations, to consider its value as an expo- 
nent of a creative intelligence, and therefore as a proof of a personal 
Author of Nature. In order to its full, or at least sufficient, discus- 
sion, it will be presented as follows : I. The Principle Stated ; II. The 
Principle Defended ; III. Objections to the Principle Removed ; IV. 
The Final Cause or Established End of Nature. 



THE PRINCIPLE ST A TED. 287 

The principle of final cause is simply that nature exhibits evi- 
dences of a purpose or end in its forms, functions, and adaptations, 
and that the idea of purpose or design thus discovered in nature is an 
infallible proof of a supervising intelligence in, over, and above na- 
ture. It is the principle of intentionality in the universe, embracing 
the largest cosmical plans and the smallest purposes in the most minute 
objects of nature. It sweeps the whole circle of design on exhibition 
in the phenomenal realm. To express the teleological character of 
nature, or the presence of a teleological spirit in nature, philosophers 
should invent a more adequate and less misleading form of speech 
than the scholastic term "final cause," and a more definite word 
than " design," which theology has pressed into service quite beyond 
justification or necessity. Still, so long as they are understood to 
refer to an intelligent principle, or the operation of a governing mind 
in the universe, we shall not quarrel over words and phrases, how- 
ever inadequate and incomplete they are as representations of the 
great idea. 

Hartmann introduces four elements into the idea of final cause : 
(a). The conception of the end; (6). The conception of the means; 
(c). The realization of the means; (d). The realization of the end. 
This is a larger definition than is required, and involves certain im- 
portant distinctions in confusion. The end must be distinguished 
from the means ; the means are included in the idea of efficient cause, 
and do not enter into the idea of final cause. To be sure, the con- 
ception of end in the divine mind may have been associated with 
the conception of means to the end, which is saying that final and 
efficient causes may be parallel, but not on that account identical, or 
even always mutually inclusive. In its application to nature final 
cause must be separated from association with efficient cause, or both 
will lose their individuality. Each means a separate and distinct 
feature, requiring, in order to be understood, a separate and distinct 
treatment. 

The necessity of the vindication of teleology as a natural principle 
arises from several considerations, one of which is that David Hume 
undertook the wholesale destruction of all causal principles in nature 
by reducing all events to a series of antecedents and consequents, and 
denying the causal connection of physical changes and motions. The 
end he had in view was the annihilation of the doctrine of efficient 
cause, but it carried with it the elimination of final cause, or the tel- 
eological principle. In our day Mr. Darwin utters a caution against 
" ascribing intentions to nature," but the weakness of the caution lies 
in the phraseology with which it is expressed. There is a difference 
between "ascribing intentions to nature," and discovering purposes in 



288 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

nature. If Mr. Darwin found theistic scientists ascribing intentions to 
nature, he did well to caution against it ; but the work of discovering 
ends in the economy of nature involves no embarrassment, and calls 
for no caution. 

Quite to our surprise, an attack has recently been made on teleol- 
ogy from a Christian quarter on the ground that it undertakes to 
prove too much, and fails in proving the very point in dispute, 
namely, the presence of a supervising intelligence. Prof. Hicks is the 
new assailant, who coins a word — eutaxiology — to express the idea that 
order in nature, rather than the purpose of nature, is the strongest 
proof of divine supervision over nature. Teleology is thus retired 
to the rear. 

The verity of the doctrine of final cause, or its defense and estab- 
lishment, is incumbent on those who reject the successional idea of 
Hume, or who refuse to see it retired at the dictum of others, who 
imagine a better theory in its stead. Preliminarily, we observe that 
the exposition and proof of the teleological principle is not so easy a 
task as that which is imposed on the advocates of the doctrine of effi- 
cient cause. The existence of any object raises the presumption of 
efficient cause. What caused the cholera? What caused the Amer- 
ican Revolution ? Of every thing, every historic event, every disease, 
every action, we naturally and instinctively inquire the cause. The 
doctrine of efficient causation is primarily, intuitively, and univer- 
sally received, except when a perverted philosophy undertakes to 
overthrow it. The doctrine of final cause does not spring from a law 
of the mind. It can not be urged on primary or universal grounds. 
Cause implies effect, but not the purpose of the effect. The purpose 
is an after-thought, taken up, if at all, subsequently to the recognition 
of both cause and effect. A child may inquire the cause of an action 
without inquiring if any thing is designed by it. The thought of 
cause is spontaneous, the thought of purpose reflective. The one in- 
volves no rational exercise of the mental powers ; the other requires 
an intellectual act. It is not intuitive to follow out the results of 
actions, and knit together the observable designs into a concrete or 
complex system. The first inquiry we can not avoid ; the second we 
can refuse to make. The first, therefore, is necessary ; the second 
optional. If, however, final cause is not an intuitional suspicion, and 
requires demonstration before it can be received, it is as necessary to 
the explanation of nature as efficient cause, as either without the 
other would be insufficient. 

In support of the doctrine of final cause we call attention to the 
relation to it of the theory of development, affirming that if the evo- 
lutionary hypothesis of nature be true only in its most general aspects, 



METHODOLOGY OF NATURE. 289 

it is a complete confirmation of the doctrine under consideration. 
Specific evolution, as advocated by Hackel and others, is essentially 
materialistic, but in its processes and results it is essentially teleolog- 
ical. If nature is a development at all, it is the development of a 
fixed order, and, therefore, of a fixed or necessitated and contemplated 
result. Fixedness of order, process, or result is a sign of the teleo- 
logical spirit. Dr. McCosh uses the phrase ' ' uniformity of nature " 
as expressive of the single-eyed purpose of nature ; but we prefer to 
speak of the fixedness of nature's processes and the certainty of na- 
ture's results as the constituents of the fact of design in nature. Be- 
tween chance and design there is no middle ground. Nature bears 
the stamp either of chance or design. If of chance, then how is 
development to be accounted for? How are the laws of development 
to be explained ? How are the orderly results of nature to be analyzed 
and interpreted ? How is the ' ' survival of the fittest " to be vindicated ? 
If nature, in her different realms, steadily tends to the preservation 
of the best and the survival of the fittest, it is proof that the idea of 
preservation and survival participates — to use Plato's word — in nature, 
and is the inspiration of her energies and the goal of her activities. 
This is design on a large scale. 

Strangely enough, and inconsistently, the development theory has 
been turned against final cause, because the latter is implicit with the 
theistic notion. A true evolution theory is implicit also with the 
idea of God, but since the idea has been eliminated the theory has 
fallen into decay. 

It is affirmed, however, that the development theory, strictly ap- 
plied, can have reference only to the order or method in nature, and 
is in no way related to the design or end of nature. It is clear that 
an argument built upon the methodology of nature — the eutaxiobgy 
of Prof. Hicks — in favor of divine supervision in the universe must 
be irresistible ; but methodology is one of the strongest evidences of 
teleology. Why a methodical action, if nothing is intended ? Why 
the regular or uniform rotation of the earth, if it is not intended ? 
Why the seasons, the law of gravitation, the law of chemical affinity ? 
The fact of method, order, harmony, uniformity, regularity in nature, 
demonstrates not only a controlling agency, but also a designing 
agency, which supervises nature through harmonious methods for the 
accomplishment of specific purposes, inwrought in the very fibers of 
the natural world. 

In the same way efficient cause becomes a proclamation of final 
cause. One is a key to the other, if one will use it as such. For- 
getting the mysterious gap that sometimes exists between them, the 
nexus being obscure, the relation of cause and effect is such that, 

19 



290 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

given the one, the other may in most cases, be found. In fact, the 
efficient is the pledge of the final cause ; for action is not for itself, 
but for something beyond itself. Motion is not for motion, but for 
change. In nature nothing exists or occurs for its own sake, but has 
reference to something beyond. An efficient cause can not stop 
with itself; if it does, in what sense is it efficient? It is efficient in 
proportion as it produces something or effects something beyond 
itself. An efficient cause is not a species of ventriloquism, a mere 
appearance of power, a mockery, and a vanity ; but a cause capable 
of achievement, execution, having the ability to go beyond itself; 
otherwise it is inefficient. The idea of efficient cause carries the idea 
of final cause, or the terms imply nothing. 

The direct or affirmative evidence of the doctrine is m the nature 
of facts that are difficult of explanation on any other hypothesis than 
that of final cause. In certain forms of matter we see certain uses 
and adaptations, a certain preparation for ends; as in the eye the 
preparation for vision, and in the stomach a preparation for digestion. 
These preparations, adaptations, and functions are the anticipations 
of, or sign-boards to, final cause. If this be regarded as a new 
statement of the old principle that design signifies a designer, no 
denial will be made; for it is difficult to overcome the prejudice 
that, wherever there is use or adaptation, it is the result of inten- 
tion, and, if intended, the personality of the agent intending it is 
inferred. 

At this point not a little warfare has occurred. A discrimination 
has been demanded between function and end, or use and design, on 
the ground that there is no positive relation between them. It is 
denied that function or use can be inferred from the structure of an 
organ ; and, likewise, that end or design, in the sense of previously 
contemplated purpose, can be inferred either from structure or func- 
tion. Quoting Janet's illustrated statement of the denial, " Inspira- 
tion is performed in one case by lungs, in another by gills; among 
certain animals it is effected by the skin ; among plants by the leaves." 
Function, therefore, can not be inferred from structure, since the 
same function is performed by organs of different structure. Such a 
conclusion is not warranted by the facts, which rather prove that 
variety of structure is in perfect harmony with singleness of function. 
Besides, the argument for final cause does not rest in structure, but 
in function. That several organs, as the lungs, gills, and leaves, 
perform the same function of respiration, is proof that the function- 
maker employed various instrumentalities for the execution of a 
common purpose. In these cases there is not variety of function, 
but variety of structure. Function is the chief thought ; function 



INTENTIONALITY IN NA TURE. 291 

determines final cause ; for if, as Janet shows, function is imminent 
in structure, design or intended purpose is imminent in function. 
Natural functions imply original design respecting them. There may 
be perversion of use, or artificial employment of structures, which 
might seem to contradict the general relation of structure and func- 
tion ; but perverted use must not be confounded with natural use. 
David selects a pebble, and sinks it into the forehead of Goliah. 
Here the pebble is used to inflict death ; its natural use, its orginal 
design, is something very different. In the colonial period of our 
country's history, when metallic money was scarce, tobacco was used 
in Virginia as a medium of exchange. The use of tobacco as money 
must be separated from the natural design of tobacco. Artificial use 
bears against the doctrine of final cause; natural use supports it. 
In the physical world, perversion of function is not the rule, but 
the exception ; hence, the argument from natural use is undis- 
turbed. * The steps of the argument are, first, structure; second, 
function; third, design. Structure 'points to function; function points 
to design. 

It is immaterial whether we subpoena physiology, chemistry, 
astronomy, geology, natural philosophy, botany, or meteorology in 
defense and illustration of the principle of intentionality in nature; 
the scientific proof of the principle, taken from any department of 
nature, is abundant and irresistible. It is a condition underlying 
human belief that a concurrence of facts reflecting a law or principle 
strengthens faith in the law or principle. If it were difficult to point 
to instances of design in the phenomenal world ; if the majority of 
facts were against it; if the evidences of design were not clearly 
manifest, but must be searched for and explained when found, — the 
doctrine of final cause would soon retire from philosophy. On the 
other hand, if the instances are rare in which design is absent ; if every 
science abounds in facts bearing the marks of original purpose; if 
the exceptions to the doctrine can be explained in harmony with the 
doctrine ; if the evidences of the principle are universal, — it must be 
received, all other views to the contrary. Design in nature is the 
proof that it was designed ; or, design was designed. This we affirm. 
Plato foreshadows it in the Timceus, when he intimates that motion 
implies a mover, the effect implies a cause. Prof. J. P. Cooke 
yields entirely too much when he says, ''design in nature can not be 
demonstrated," but that the argument for it is purely analogical. Any 
thing less than demonstration will not meet the emergency. Unless 
the principle can be established with mathematical certainty, unless 
something more than probability can be invoked in its behalf, it will 
beget a doubt of its own existence, and merely rank as a hypothesis 



292 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

or presumption, and not as a fact or reality. To the facts of nature 
we appeal in support of the reality of the principle. 

First, the "testimony of the atmosphere," which Prof. Cooke re- 
gards unimpeachable, is briefly submitted. Consider the simple fact 
of its currents. We refer not to tornadoes or local breezes, but to 
great atmospheric movements, extending from the Equator to the 
Poles, and from the Poles to the Equator — currents sweeping from 
continent to continent, equalizing the climate of the globe. Without 
these currents, the temperate zone would be almost uninhabitable; 
but the warm air of the tropics, in its northward march, bathes the 
zone and renders it delightful. The annual changes in the climates 
of Asia and Africa, "the daily alternation of land and sea breezes," 
and the regularity of the principal trade-winds, are due to this at- 
mospheric interchange. Now, either this interchange was designed, 
or it is the purest accident. If accidental, it may not occur next 
year; but that it will repeat itself, and that the interchange is an 
established order, all believe ; and, if it is a fixed order, the argument 
for teleology has something of a basis. This general fact aside, let 
us consider some particulars, more important and more conclusive. 
The atmosphere is a reservoir of electricity. The "electrical machine 
of nature " produces electricity in such quantities, and hurls it with 
such desperation, that, without some provision to prevent its whole- 
sale discharge upon the earth, man will be in perpetual danger of 
destruction from this agency alone. This is no trifling matter, there- 
fore. If any arrangement can be detected by which such a danger is 
averted, the evidence of design in the arrangement should be granted. 
A very important fact in this connection is that the atmosphere itself 
is a poor conductor of electricity. A second fact is, that every rain- 
drop and snow-flake will absorb electricity on its way to the earth, 
thus limiting the discharge. A still more interesting fact is, that 
every mountain-chain is hungry for the electrical content, and 
silently lifts up its hands to receive the descending force. To com- 
plete the arrangement, every tree is a lightning-rod, safely and 
quietly conducting electricity to the ground, while every blade of 
grass is an absorbent of the descending fire. Thus, the atmosphere 
and the solid earth are so related that it is only when the electricity 
accumulates in larger quantities than can be carried off, it becomes a 
hurtful force ; but even then it is under restraint, showing the pres- 
ence of a governing and guarding power. The arrangement may be 
accidental, but to one accustomed to perceive relations, or trace the 
connection between causes and effects, it appears like a fore-ordained 
system of checks and balances, by which benevolent ends may 
be realized. 



PROOFS OF FINAL CAUSE. 293 

A still more striking instance of a plan in the chemistry of nature 
is the " diffusion" of oxygen, or its constancy in the atmosphere. 
The disturbance of the proportion of oxygen would affect sound, 
sight, breathing, life ; whatever changes take place in the atmosphere, 
the proportion of oxygen must remain. The chemist affirms that the 
law of proportion is never disturbed. This may be accidental, but it 
is difficult to understand how an accidental arrangement has the ap- 
pearance of, and is, in fact, a fixed and unchangeable order. 

The arrangement includes the preservation of the equilibrium of 
the atmosphere ; its homogeneity might be disturbed, its volume 
might be reduced or increased, effecting changes prejudicial to human 
interests ; but the quantity remains the same, and its equilibrium is 
preserved. Contributing to this end is that delicate provision by 
which the vegetable world is continually exchanging oxygen for the 
carbon of the animal world — a process that insures stability, circula- 
tion, interchange, and unity in the atmosphere. 

Oxygen, too, is odorless and tasteless. Perhaps this is a small 
fact ; but, since the air must be inhaled every moment, what an an- 
noyance it would prove if the olfactory nerve or the sense of taste 
were affected at every inspiration! This is a part of the testimony 
of chemistry to the righteousness of the claim of teleology. Is it not 
sufficient? The alternative is, that the atmospheric arrangement 
is wholly and essentially accidental, or that it is designed. Order, 
plans, ends, are the evidences of design, or design is a word that has 
no meaning, or represents, if it represent any thing, a fictitious idea. 
The imminency of end or purpose in nature has a satisfactory dem- 
onstration in the appointments, laws, and facts of chemistry. 

Nor less conclusive is the argument from physiology, or the evi- 
dences of final cause in man. Galen, the physician, said the teleology 
of physiology is the foundation of religion. Janet confines his chap- 
ter on "Facts" in proof of final cause to the human body, discover- 
ing in its laws and adaptations the evidence he is seeking. " The 
happiness of mankind, as well as of all other rational creatures," says 
Adam Smith, "seems to have been the original purpose of the Au- 
thor of nature." Man the proof of final cause ! This is the base-line 
of the defense. 

Look at the human skeleton ; a frame-work of uses ; an outline of 
design; a model of purpose. By reason of the bone-form, man is up- 
right, different in this respect from all other animals. This means 
something ; surely it is not an accident. The protection of the 
vital organs, a most important feature in the human economy, is se- 
cured by the arrangement of the osseous system. The skull protects 
the brain, gives form to the head, and is a distinguishing mark among 



294 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the races. The ribs protect the lungs, and the pelvis the organs of 
generation. In the formation of the knee-joint the idea of a hinge is 
patent, allowing one kind of motion, while the shoulder-joint — a ball 
and socket — is so constructed as to permit a free movement of the 
arm in nearly every direction. Had accident ruled, the hinge might 
have appeared at the shoulder, and the ball and socket at the knee, 
and then man had been in perpetual trouble. The skeleton as it is 
is proof of wisdom in its construction. 

Passing to the muscular system, it should be observed that the 
muscles are attached to the bones, which secures for them permanency 
of place. This is something ; it is a fortunate arrangement. It is 
usual to describe some of the processes of nature as involuntary, such 
as digestion, respiration, and circulation ; they are maintained during 
the sleeping as well as the waking hours, and are in no sense de- 
pendent on the volition or conscious co-operation of the individual. 
Dependent on his co-operation, his life would be a terror to himself. 
Asthma, dyspepsia, and palpitation of the heart show what trouble 
would be in store were each man under the necessity of watching, 
regulating, and prompting the processes now happily involuntarily 
performed. That these processes may thus be performed it is neces- 
sary that the muscles involved shall perform their functions without 
weariness. This we find to be actually the case. The heart beats 
for years and never tires ; the stomach, unless asked to do more than 
it ought to do, will perform its work without fatigue. It should 
be remembered that other muscles, not involved in vital or involun- 
tary processes, do grow weary, and expostulate against continued toil. 
The muscles of the legs and hands, though consisting of the same 
kind of muscular tissue as the heart, and their method of action the 
same, soon exhibit signs of fatigue, and the man must rest. The dif- 
ference is indicative of wisdom in the construction of the machine ; 
the body has been formed with these facts in view. The vital pro- 
cesses are ceaseless ; the voluntary are susceptible of weakness. If we 
should consider separate from the others any single process, or any 
muscle whose action is involuntary, it would exhibit the strongest 
evidence of design. As to the heart, the right ventricle is weaker 
than the left, for the reason that it propels the blood to the lungs, 
while the left ventricle must propel it throughout the system ; hence, 
the walls of the latter are stronger, tougher, merely adapted to its 
purpose. The doctrine of final cause led Harvey to the discovery of 
the circulation of the blood, and properly so. The valves and general 
structure of the heart indicate function. But we reverse Harvey's 
mental process, and declare that the circulation of the blood points to 
final cause. It has an end. From the structure of the heart to its 



PROOFS FROM PHYSIOLOGY. 295 

functions is an easy physiological step; from functions to intention- 
ality is as easy a metaphysical step. 

The involuntary process of digestion is dependent on the gastric 
juice, the most powerful solvent known. With the exception of 
mineral and poisonous substances, and living matter, it will dissolve 
every thing that enters the stomach. All animal and vegetable food 
at once submits to its power. It is a strange fact that in animals the 
gastric juice has no such almost unlimited power as it has in man. 
In animals its power is limited to a few articles, so that some are 
carnivorous only, while man eats every thing and digests every thing, 
except as above stated. If the gastric juice in man is such a solvent, 
why does it not dissolve the stomach itself? Here is another wonder, 
the explanation of which is another evidence of the law of final 
cause in his physiological history. The juice will not dissolve living 
matter ; hence, a tape-worm will live in the system ; so also other 
worms. It dissolves dead matter only ; hence, it can not disorganize 
the stomach. If this is not proof of design, we know not where to 
look for proof. 

In the respiratory system the arragement for the inhalation and 
exhalation of air is so perfect that it must have been intended, or 
intention can not be predicated of anything. 

The nervous system is equally wonderful in its testimony to the 
idea or law of final cause. Admitting that the nerves are the con- 
necting links between mind and matter, it is well known that the 
material properties of the nerves are not unlike those of other sub- 
stances. Again, nerves resembling one another in structure are en- 
dowed with entirely different functions ; as the optic nerve is in no 
essential different from the olfactory nerve, yet each exercises an in- 
dependent office. Nervous matter does not differ from other matter ; 
nervous matter composing different nervous tissues can not be classi- 
fied into different kinds. It is one kind, and similar to other matter. 
Why these different properties, functions, adaptations of the nerves? 
Certain physiologists quoted by Janet can not harmonize variety of 
structure with oneness of function ; but here is even a deeper prob- 
lem, the harmonizing of variety of function with homogeneity of tissue. 
As, however, the one problem has its solution in final cause, so has 
the other. Both are proofs of the superintendence of wisdom in the 
world, of ends designed by an infinite mind. 

Of the five senses, and the marvelous mechanism of the organs, 
especially of sight and hearing, a lesson in wisdom may be learned, 
and a deduction in favor of final cause be made. The eye, the h> 
strument of vision, is perhaps the most wonderful in construction and 
the most perfect in its functions of the organs of the human body. 



296 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

It stands, as Janet says, as the classical argument for design or final 
cause. Its offices and adaptations have been so frequently described, 
and all are so familiar with its value, that it would seem like need- 
less repetition to advance here an argument based upon it; but it 
may be said that the eye is a rebuke of atheism such as no other or- 
gan can administer. The ear has been employed in defense of final 
cause, and why not? To say that the ear may be used in hearing, 
implying that possibly its chief function may be something else, is to 
disassociate structure and function, quite impossible in this instance. 
So the sense of touch, the sense of smell, and the sense of taste, con- 
tributing to man's pleasure, preservation and development, may be 
quoted in proof of intention on the part of man's Maker. 

To assume that the organs of the body, the muscles, nerves, bones, 
viscera, and so forth, have certain functions, without assuming at the 
same time that they were designed or appointed, is an assumption 
that falls short of the truth. Even if structure do not indicate or 
prove function, function indicates and proves design. Human works 
are interpreted by this principle. A locomotive voices the purpose 
of the mechanic that made it ; a watch — Paley's argument — reflects 
the purpose of the watchmaker ; a statue — Socrates's argument — ex- 
hibits the mind of the sculptor ; Homer's Iliad — Cicero's argument — 
must have been written, and, as written, it reflects the genius, the 
end, of its author. Shall it be said that man himself, the most per- 
fect machine ever made, is barren of design? So reason those who 
distinguish or break the connection between function and design. 
Folly the most stupendous, this is. The physiological proof of final 
cause, in our judgment, has never been answered; it is unanswerable. 

The astronomical proof which we now examine, although express- 
ive of power and wisdom, has not been considered so affirmative in 
its impression as the meteorological or physiological, for the reason 
that astronomical laws are so occult, and astronomical facts so obscure 
or mysterious as to render full and adequate interpretation impos- 
sible. The human mind, too, is not so eager to extend its inquiries 
to other globes or systems beyond our own, so that the proof from 
astronomy has not been fully elaborated ; it has been neglected. It 
was Comte, a French atheist, who declared our solar system imper- 
fect, and that it could be improved ; but even if this is true, it makes 
, not against the doctrine of final cause. No teleologist insists that the 
ground of final cause is the perfection of nature, but that structure, 
function, adaptation, achievement, do together afford a basis of faith 
in the principle. The demonstration of design in the eye turns not 
upon the perfection of the organ, but upon the possibility of vision 
through it. Imperfect hearing does not invalidate the teleological 



TESTIMONY OF ASTRONOMY. 297 

argument from the ear. So an alleged imperfection in the astronom- 
ical systems in no way contradicts, undermines, or reflects unfavor- 
ably upon the teleological argument based upon the systems. What 
is the alleged imperfection ? It can not lie in the law of attraction, 
which binds them together, and especially under whose influence our 
solar system, embracing thirty planets, is maintained in perfect order, 
every planet pursuing its circular or elliptical course, and at a speed 
terrific and incomputable, without danger of collision with another, 
and without variation of one minute in a thousand years from the 
standard time of its. revolutions. Beyond the earth's system are 
others still more stupendous in their revolutions, embracing worlds 
that eclipse ours in magnitude, and all revolving around a com- 
mon center in blissful unconsciousness of the power that controls 
and the spirit that ordains their movements. Surely there is no 
failure here. 

In the prevention of antagonisms and accidents in the astronom- 
ical systems, in the everlasting peace and order of the firmament, there 
is indisputable proof of the presence of a superintending mind, which 
regulates the velocity of the planets, and determines the direction of 
their movements, and calculates the length of their orbits, thus antic- 
ipating peace and securing it. Aware that this is a general statement, 
it is nevertheless sufficient for our purpose ; besides, astronomical ev- 
idence can not be very, or at least exhaustively, minute. What the 
final cause of the astronomical system is, we do not now inquire ; for 
it is a separate question. To point out evidences of design in those 
systems is one thing ; to declare the specific design of the systems is 
quite another, a task that does not belong to the teleologist. How- 
ever, respecting the earth, it is evident that the design of its revolu- 
tions, both on its axis and around the sun, is the perpetual recurrence 
of day and night, and of the four seasons of the year. So marked 
results must have been designed ; for if not designed, we ask in vain 
for explanation. If better acquainted with other worlds, one might 
declare the results of their revolutions in benefits to their inhabitants ; 
but without inquiring for details, or summarizing discoveries in this 
field, it is apparent that the great design of the astronomical system 
is in some form the conservation of life, an end that justifies faith in 
the presence of infinite wisdom in the universe. The moral effects 
arising from a contemplation of the astronomical systems, such as the 
spirit of humility and adoration, and an overwhelming sense of the 
greatness of the Creator, the materialist may ignore, nor do we insist 
upon them ; but, confining the view entirely to facts, astronomy, 
with its wonders, its laws, its harmonies, its beneficial schemes, its 
security of safety among the worlds, and the spirit of unity which it 



298 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

everywhere exhibits, contributes no inconsiderable argument to the 
support of the claim of teleology. 

The botanical marks of design must be added to the catalogue of 
proofs of the doctrine of final cause. The vegetable kingdom is, to 
some extent, a mirror of certain biological forces, working out ends 
after established patterns under the law of like producing like, and 
verifying the operation of a fundamental and universal principle. In 
that the acorn produces the oak, the apple the apple, the grape the 
grape, it may be claimed that the law of stability of species is in force 
in the vegetable as well as in the animal kingdom. Law prevails 
quite as definitely in the vegetable as in the animal world. The 
habits of plants are as distinctly marked as the habits of ani- 
mals. In origin, in structure, in development, in function, and in 
evident design the vegetable world articulates as clearly the law of 
final cause as the animal world. In the fructification of plants, in 
the phyllotactic law by which the leaves are properly distributed, so 
as to secure proportion and beauty, in the uses of fruits as foods, in 
the variety of forms and colors in tree, fern, and flower, and in the 
general use of wood as fuel, in house-building, and ship-building, the 
marks of design are abundant and patent. Even in the decay of the 
vegetable world, resulting in the enrichment of the soil, or in those 
vast store-houses of coal, the result of buried forests ages ago, there 
is proof of a divine purpose to prepare the earth for man, and make 
it continually contribute to his happiness. Of the beauty in the 
botanical realm we need not more than say that it is a reflection of 
the benevolence and beauty of its Maker. European thinkers are 
almost agreed that beauty is an unknown quality in things having the 
power to excite the love of the beautiful in man. Beauty is objective. 
If this be true, then indeed is it a marvelous proof of the final cause 
of nature. Taking all the facts which the vegetable kingdom brings 
to us, and interpreting them as they ought to be interpreted, it is 
difficult not to see that they support the doctrine of final cause. 

The zoological argument is a complete demonstration of final cause. 
The Duke of Argyll is emphatic in the assertion that " the whole 
order of nature is one vast system of contrivance," and while his gen- 
eral argument is in support of the statement, the particular argument 
is drawn from that provision in the animal kingdom by which flight 
is secured. The machinery by which the navigation of the air is ac- 
complished is a striking evidence of the spirit of contrivance in the 
world, which adjusts means to ends. Whether one, like Janet, spe- 
cializes human physiology, or, like the Duke of Argyll, magnifies the 
machinery of birds, whether man or bird be studied, the result is the 
same — final cause is proclaimed, foaming over the field of zoology 



PROOFS FROM NATURE AS A WHOLE. 299 

for general facts or evidences of the principle of design, they are soon 
found in the habits of animals, in the homes they build for them- 
selves, in their care of the young, in their means of self-defense, and 
in their adaptations to particular modes of life. Here is a spinning 
caterpillar that resembles the twig under which it has taken shelter — 
this is its protection; there is a lion with paw strong enough to kill 
a horse at a single blow — this is his protection. The monkey sus- 
pends himself by his tail from a branch of a tree, and sleeps all 
night, free from the fear of danger ; the panther repairs to his jungle, 
but is alert to see danger, and stands ready to meet it. The squirrel 
will lay up food for the Winter ; the fox will depend upon his shrewd- 
ness for his daily allowance. The eagle will train the eaglet to fly ; 
the buffalo rarely imparts instructions to the young, nor is it neces- 
sary. Variety of methods, variety of activities, variety of functions, 
variety of adaptations — these demonstrate the spirit of purpose in the 
animal kingdom. 

Take nature as a whole; take Maupertius's law of least action, which 
implies the employment of only a sufficient amount of force for a given 
end, and forbids a waste of force; take " the law of definite proportions," 
under which the elementary substances will combine, and combine under 
no other law; take all the kingdoms of nature, with all their laws, struc- 
tures, functions, and adaptations, and the conclusion must be that nature 
is a scheme of ends, breaking out in wonderful variety in all its depart- 
ments, and regulated by the laws each kingdom ^reveals. This is not 
exhaustive; it is demonstrative, however, and the demonstration is as 
mathematical as any solution in Euclid. 

The duty to consider objections to the doctrine of final cause we 
shall not ignore or treat with contempt. It is admitted that, dem- 
onstrated as is the doctrine, there are those who are not convinced 
by the " evidences," and require still stronger foundations for faith. 
Their intelligence we can not impeach, the plausibility of their argu- 
ments we can not deny. Justice to truth and a willingness honestly 
to inspect the alleged weakness of the doctrine require a full repre- 
sentation of the objections in all their bearings, and then an admis- 
sion of their force, or an exposure of their hollowness. Both sides 
are bolstered with great names. This should warn the investigator 
against accepting or rejecting a principle merely because an hon- 
ored thinker may be quoted on one side or the other. Nor is one's 
friendship for a doctrine to weigh in a final estimate of it. If the 
doctrine appeal to fact, then to fact all must go ; if to revelation, 
then to revelation all should go ; if to law or scientifically-deduced 
principle, then law shall be the test; if to reason, there is room for 
speculation, but logic sometimes is imperious. 



300 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

In irony K. E. von Baer characterizes teleology as telephoby, but 
the teleological claim can not not be ridiculed out of existence. This, 
however, is one of the steps a materialist is sure to take, especially 
if he suspect the principle he assails has any theological bearing, or 
is difficult to extinguish. Ridicule deserves no answer. An effect 
follows a cause. Is effect synonymous with end ? The anti-teleologist 
discriminates between effect and end, but the discrimination is no 
more valid than that of the physiologist between fuuction and end. 
The effect of the flapping of the eagle's wings is flight ; the end is 
the effect. The effect of the use of the vocal organs is speech ; the 
end can not be separated from the effect. 

Schopenhauer was radical enough to assert that, even when design 
can be predicated from structure, it is not an indication of intelligence, 
so that the doctrine of ends fully established in no sense justifies be- 
lief in a governing mind in the universe. As pessimism will admit 
the presence of mind under no circumstances in the affairs of the 
world, it is of little use to contend against it for a principle the 
proof of which, even though complete, it will not accept. 

Comte denied the principle of intentionality, and asserted that 
nature can be sufficiently explained by the principle of gravitation ; 
but he forgot to acknowledge that the law of gravitation is the law 
of final cause. Gravitation means order and harmony throughout the 
universe. 

Dropping minor objections, a very forcible exception to the doc- 
trine has been framed out of the apparently useless structures, organs, 
and objects in nature, to overcome which an adequate explanation of 
the cases cited in proof must be given. The physiologist reports that 
the spleen in man is an organ without known functions ; hence, it is 
a useless organ. It should be remembered that Plato considered the 
bile a vicious secretion. As modern physiology has corrected his 
error, so future physiology may determine the mysterious uses of the 
splenetic organ. It is also said that the intestinal canal has a " blind 
intestine," and the eye a winking membrane, without particular func- 
tions, and can be dispensed with without loss; but it is going be- 
yond warrant to assume that any thing is functionless because the 
investigator is ignorant of the function. The argument from rudi- 
mentary organs is an extended one, including fish with rudimentary 
eyes, whales with rudimentary teeth, animals with rudimenatry mus- 
cles, worms with rudimentary limbs, and birds with rudimentary 
wings. The ostrich has wings, but can not fly ; true, but they assist 
in locomotion nevertheless. 

Has a grain of sand an end ? This perplexed Plato ; but the 
minerologist finds an end for every thing in his kingdom. It is some- 



RUDIMENTARY ORGANS. 301 

times hinted that as nature is largely composed of ten or twelve ele- 
ments, it is proof that the nearly fifty elements remaining are almost 
if not wholly useless, and that the spirit of purpose did not play an 
important part in the systems of world-building. The question is not 
so much whether they played an important part as whether they 
played any part at all in the construction of the universe. Essential 
as are oxygen, carbon, silicon, and hydrogen to the universe, it had 
not been without the minor elementary substances. Nitrogen, dead 
as it seems to be, is as necessary as oxygen, the life-giving element. 
The Duke of Argyll regards the exceptions pointed out by physiolo- 
gists and materialists as subordinate facts that must be explained by 
reference to the general purposes of nature. This, we think, is the 
real solution of the difficulty. Great designs include all the subordi- 
nate facts or factors with which they are associated, whether the use 
of subordinate conditions or structures can be explained or not. The 
" higher purpose of nature " governs the " lesser," the latter of which 
it is not essential to understand. If it is evident that a bird's wing 
is constructed for flight, it is not necessary, in order to vindicate final 
cause, that the teleologist shall explain the design of the color of the 
wing, which is a subordinate question entirely. If it is established 
that the eye is designed for sight, the failure to explain the winking 
membrane is not stupendous, or at all vital. One great purpose may 
include a score of subordinate purposes. It is a species of presump- 
tion in man to circumscribe the purposes of nature by his knowledge 
of them, or his ability to ascertain them. He assumes that since he 
does not know the special use of an organ it has no use, when science 
is loudly proclaiming that by waiting a little we shall know more 
than we do now. This scientific dictum we accept, and urge investi- 
gators not too hastily to employ rudimentary organs in their attack 
on final cause until they are sure they are rudimentary ; and when 
that is established they must be equally sure that a rudimentary organ 
is functionless. Both of these conclusions have been assumed ; neither 
has been proved. A materialist looks upon a rudimentary organ as 
proof that nature attempted to do something and failed, or that, at 
all events, its work in those cases is useless. But it is not clear in 
such cases that nature did not accomplish all she had in view, and if 
she did not it might be pertinent to inquire if she had any thing in 
view, for if she had nothing in view she can not be accused of failing 
to do something ; or it might be asked if she might not yet accom- 
plish purposes not revealed through the rudimentary organs? To 
assume that a rudimentary organ is functionless, is to assume that it 
served no purpose in the past and can serve none in the future, an 
assumption no one is competent to make. A rudiment is the historic 



302 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

sign of fulfilled purpose, or the prophetic sign of a future purpose. In 
this way we dispose of the objection from rudimentary organs against 
final cause. 

The explanation of the details of nature can not be satisfactorily 
made in the light of a single principle. Many purposes obtain in 
the phenomenal world to which the great facts may be referred ; but 
the minor works may be obscure or in apparent violation of the great 
principles or great purposes. Meeting with such contradictions, it is 
enough if the great principles and purposes can exist in spite of 
them. Nature is the embodiment of a great plan. Looking at it as 
a whole, it is pertinent to inquire if the alleged irregularities and useless 
appendages compromise the plan. Is the discovery of a single un- 
favorable fact sufficient to cancel the whole plan ? Will a broken 
key in a piano destroy the evidence of design in the instrument ? 
Does consumption destroy the mark of design in the lungs ? The 
whole plan of nature is sufficient to carry all the compromises, irregu- 
larities, deficiencies, and rudimentary exhibitions which the busy minds 
of materialists can invent or discover. In the large view of nature 
the small disappears. 

The next objection is that of Comte, who, on the ground that the 
ways of the Deity can not be ascertained and have not been revealed, 
denies validity to our alleged knowledge of final cause. While he 
preferred not to be ranked with the atheistic school, the atheism of 
his objection is quite apparent. There are methods of divine action 
that have not been explained or analyzed; there are ends of the 
divine government so obscure that one must hesitate in pronouncing 
them. On the other hand, some ends of his government are fully re- 
vealed ; or, if not revealed, they may be rationally discovered ; and 
there are methods that are sufficiently transparent, or will disclose 
themselves to the searching and penetrating spirit. The works of God 
are not enigmas, in the sense that neither the purposes with which 
they are pregnant, nor the methods by which the purposes will be 
wrought out, can be determined. If the mineralogist is baffled in his 
search for purpose in certain crystals, the physiologist rejoices in the 
discovery of ends in structures and organs. If the astronomer can 
not convince himself that a comet has any special end to serve, 
the naturalist is constantly astounded by the revelations of new de- 
signs in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Nature, dark on one 
side, may be light on the other. God's ways, methods, laws, purposes, 
are not all hidden. Because some ends are unknown, it is not con- 
clusive that all ends are unknown. But, if all were unknown, it is 
not clear that we would be justified in denying the existence of ends. 
Ignorance of ends is not a valid objection to their existence. 



THE S UPEBNA T URAL ELEMENT. 303 

The objection of Positivism, as expressed by M. Littr6, tbat final 
cause implies supernatural intervention, or an interposing miraculous 
influence, is a concession to truth not anticipated from that quarter. 
In order to overthrow the doctrine in issue, the positivist invokes re- 
ligious prejudice and assails it, not on its merits, but on its alleged 
theological, or rather supernatural, content, and achieves an apparent 
victory. The relation of supernatural influence or agency to final 
cause is such that it is difficult to see how ends can be framed and exe- 
cuted without a supervising intelligence ; but the positivist surrenders 
his position when he recognizes that relation. However, the super- 
natural element in final cause, or the necessity of a constantly inter- 
fering influence in order to accomplish ends, has been misinterpreted 
by the positivist ; hence, his antagonism. He fancies that the super- 
natural element can express itself only by miraculous method, which 
compels him to reject it; for the idea of a miraculously sustained 
universe is repugnant to his sense of order in nature. Any end that 
must depend upon miraculous aid for its accomplishment, he conceives 
will never be wrought out. He, therefore, is ready to disown the 
supernatural element entirely. 

One great lesson to be learned is, that the supernatural element, 
in its interposition in nature, or association with it, through laws, or 
otherwise, for the attainment of specific ends, acts, not miraculously, 
but regularly, orderly, and naturally. Prof. Newcomb, blind to this 
distinction, goes over to the mechanical theory of the universe. This 
is a turning-point in the history of supernatural influence in nature 
and humanity. It may insert itself in a miraculous manner, but its 
ordinary method is natural. It is a lurking influence in nature, but 
it is not a miraculously expressed power. Failing to make this dis- 
crimination, Positivism has expelled the end-securing influence from 
its circle. 

Descartes denied that a knowledge of ends is possible, but he is 
sufficiently answered in our reply to the objection of Comte. Bacon 
eliminated final cause from physics, not because he did not accept the 
doctrine, but because it belonged, in his opinion, to the region of met- 
aphysics. Forgetting this distinction, others have quoted him in op- 
position to the doctrine, but unjustly. Conceding sincerity of motive 
to Bacon, it is not evident that he was wise in the position taken, for 
final cause has its physical, as well as metaphysical, aspects ; it is scien- 
tific, as well as theological; and, while the value of the doctrine is 
theological, the proof of it is physical. Along these lines a great 
argument might be constructed, showing the interdependence of the 
physical and metaphysical, and confirming theological truth from a 
scientific stand-point. Bacon separates the two departments of 



304 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

thought, scientific and metaphysical, in quite a satisfactory manner ; 
but neither is wholly exclusive of the other. He strikes no blow at 
final cause, but separates it from unnecessary association, as he thinks, 
and relegates its vindication to the metaphysicians. 

Perhaps the strongest objection to final cause is not theoretical, but 
practical. Of all problems, the problem of evil is the most perplexing 
both in philosophy and religion. The manner of its introduction into 
the universe, its possibility in a system of benevolent administration, 
and the purposes to be achieved through its presence, are alike elusive 
and unsearchable subjects of discussion. Apparently inconsistent 
with all optimistic ideas, revolting to all benevolent considerations, 
inimical to good, it is incumbent upon the teleologist to point out the 
providential ends involved in the dominion of evil in this world. 
Evil is the pessimistic spirit that broods over human history. Disease, 
tornado, accident, death — what the final cause of these? 

Janet undertakes to establish that evil is the " accidental conse- 
quence of the conflict of efficient and final causes, and of the conflict 
of final causes with each other." Usually clear in conception and 
strong in statement, Janet here seems uncertain of his ground, or he 
would not concede that evil is an "accidental consequence" of 
any thing. That it implies a conflict of causes is evident ; but it is 
not an accidental issue of such conflict. Far better would it be to 
say that the conflict is accidental, than that the issue is accidental. 
Given the conflict, the issue is certain. Besides, evil lies in or grows 
out of the coDflict of causes; evil is conflict. Evil is not the issue 
of conflict, but the cause of conflict. Here Janet mistakes the origin 
of evil. It is not an effect of antagonistic causes ; but the antagonism 
of causes is the effect of evil. Thus, the origin of evil lies farther 
back than Janet traced it. 

An argument from the methodology of nature in favor of final 
cause is legitimate ; but an argument from the disorders of nature, or 
want of method, is a little more difficult of construction. However, 
disorder in the universe is quite as much under law, or the product 
of law, as order; and until it is admitted that evil is an orderly re- 
sult, if regarded as a result at all, it can have no explanation. It is 
either a spirit of order, or the essence of disorder ; it is either causally 
produced, or it is an accident. It can not be an accident, for this im- 
plies chaos in the universe ; it must be a causal act, procedure, or effect, 
which implies that it is under supervision. In a competent theodicy 
there may be a place for evil, and moral reasons may be elaborated 
in its behalf, confirmatory of the teleological claim, and satisfactory 
to the theologian ; but the philosopher makes sport of them, and pur- 
sues his inquiries independently of theology. What then ? Is there a 



FINAL CAUSE OF NATURE. 305 

break-down here? If evil is a mystery in itself; if its actual benefits 
can not be portrayed ; if its final cause is hidden from view, — it does 
not follow that it is inconsistent with benevolent schemes, or that it 
reflects upon the goodness of the Creator. The contraries of good 
and evil co-exist in the world, and under the divine administration, 
with some obscure purpose in view. In the present state of knowl- 
edge, one is not warranted in arraying evil, with all its difficulties, 
against the doctrine of final cause. 

The feeble attack of Lucretius on the doctrine, that it reverses 
the natural order of facts by substituting cause for effect and effect 
for cause, is one of words only, and arises from the unfortunate im- 
plication of the terms by which the doctrine is expressed. "Final 
cause" seems to imply that the design or end of a thing is in some 
way the cause of the thing. While it is a governing influence, 
"final cause" is not the essential or producing cause, and can not be 
substituted for it. Flying is not the producing cause of wings, but it 
is the final cause. Lucretius inverted the terms himself, and then at- 
tacked his own work, and supposed he had extinguished the doctrine. 
The terms understood and properly applied, there can be no confusion 
in reasoning on the subject, and objection to the doctrine must arise 
from some other source. 

Spinoza assailed the doctrine with vigor, asserting that man is ig- 
norant of causes, and that a discovery of ends would compromise the 
perfections of God. This is a serious charge. As man is not ac- 
quainted with all the ends of nature, so he is not familiar with all 
the causes in operation ; but as some ends are patent to his thought, 
so some causes are evident to his observation and reason. Descartes 
denies a knowledge of ends ; Spinoza, a knowledge of causes. What 
is left? This conducts to ignorance, the most absolute, of the phe- 
nomenal world. To deny knowledge of causes is to invalidate all 
distinctions drawn respecting the forces in operation in nature, and to 
reduce nature to an illusion. Granted the imperfection of the human 
faculties, is the mind unable to distinguish one force from another, 
one form from another, one fact from another? If so, the denial of 
the existence of mind might as well follow. 

The more serious objection of Spinoza is that the doctrine of 
final cause implies the imperfection of the Deity. If God acts with 
an end in view, it is proof that he is not happy in himself, but is 
seeking happiness in an achievement outside of himself, according to 
the pantheistic metaphysician. On such a hypothesis the creation of 
the universe can have no explanation, for had the Deity been com- 
pletely self-happy, he had not built a single world, and if not self- 
happy he is imperfect. The objection proves too much, and, there^ 

20 



306 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

fore, overthrows itself. Again, suppose it could be definitely ascer- 
tained that God wrought without the inspiration or knowledge of 
ends — such a God would be an idiot, no better than Hartmann's 
somnambulistic supreme power. Of all beings, God must act with 
the most perfect ends in view, being perfect himself. He is not an 
air-builder, nor does he engage in constructing worlds as a pastime ; 
but he has specific ends to accomplish, which are the product of a 
wisdom that knows no imperfection, and of a power infinite and 
eternal. Spinoza's objection, the most elaborate, is the most vulnerable. 

The principal objections to final cause have been stated and re- 
viewed; a page only can be given to the fourth proposition an- 
nounced early in the chapter, namely, the final cause of nature. We 
have alluded to the necessity of viewing nature in its wholeness, as 
the only condition or method of understanding the subordinate facts 
and factors it includes. The interpretation of nature as one fact, is 
a large problem, but it must not be set aside on that account. 
Janet teaches that finality is a law of nature ; that is, that nature re- 
flects the teleological spirit, and that morality is the supreme end of 
the universe. Nature is not for God's sake, nor yet for man's ex- 
clusive sake, but for the ends of righteousness, which concern both 
God and man. Malebranche, in spiritual mood, declares that the 
incarnation of Jesus Christ was the motive that led to the creation 
of the universe ; that is, the desire for manifestation by incarnation 
impelled the appearance of the universe. According to Plato, the 
motive of Deity in the organization of worlds, was the love of exer- 
cising the principle of goodness infinitely deep in him. It was not 
love of happiness, but love of goodness that led the Deity to acts of 
creation. A moral principle then underlies the origin of the universe. 
This almost harmonizes with Janet's idea, with this difference : Plato 
held that a moral principle was the efficient cause, while Janet holds 
that a moral purpose is the final cause of the universe. Possibly 
both views are correct ; they can not be far out of the way. 

To conclude : final cause is evident in nature ; the final cause of 
nature is benevolence, goodness, morality. If not exhaustively satis- 
factory, it is sufficient for philosophy, and at least helpful in theology. 
It contradicts no sound principle in either. Without final cause, 
the universe is an enigma. Without it, God's character would re- 
quire a new interpretation. Teleology or atheism is the alternative. 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL SPIRIT. 307 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE BREAK-DOWN OK PHILOSOPHY. 

IT is reported that Ulysses, finding his ship yielding to the storm, 
sought a raft, on which he guided himself to land. He abandoned 
the great vessel so soon as he saw that its ruin was inevitable. Great 
ships have been deserted for life-boats, rafts, a single plank, any 
thing, as a means of rescue from peril, as a deliverance from ruin. 
Philosophy is Ulysses* ship, a shattered, broken-masted, sinking 
vessel ; Ulysses needs help, a raft, a life-boat. 

To inspect wrecks is not a cheerful occupation ; to gather up the 
remains of the dead after an earthquake, or storm, or accident, is not 
a pleasant task, but such a task is sometimes required at our hands. 
To this mournful duty we now address ourselves. 

In charging speculative philosophy with a break-down, or in 
speaking of it as a ruin, we must be clearly understood, or be ex- 
posed to misunderstanding. It is neither assumed nor asserted that 
the philosophic spirit has been totally productive of mischief in 
rational investigation of truth, or that the researches of the phi- 
losophers have been valueless ; on the contrary, both science and re- 
ligion have been enriched by their discoveries and strengthened by 
their teachings. The disposition to undervalue things that do not 
completely answer their ends has led not a few to reproach phi- 
losophy with failure ; but its essential work must be .recognized, and 
its worth fairly and honestly estimated. 

It can not be disputed that philosophy has securely fastened in 
the human mind the conviction of the presence of law everywhere, 
creating the suspicion of a great Law-giver ; it can not be doubted 
that it has excited the human mind to thought, opened paths of 
inquiry not discovered by the old religions, and led to some results 
that religion does not challenge. It has not proved all things, but 
it has demonstrated some truths. We are quite ready to maintain 
that the scholars it has produced ; the systems of thought it has 
inspired; the principles it has applied to human society and indi- 
vidual conduct; and the daring outreach of its spirit of knowl- 
edge into the realm of the infinite, are justifications of the great 
speculation. 

It is neither assumed nor asserted that the introduction of 
Christianity superseded the necessity of philosophic investigation, and 



308 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

that there is no room or occupation for the philosopher in the pres- 
ence of revealed truth. This would be going too far, for so long as 
man is a rational intelligence, he will be interested, and will employ 
himself, in the discussion of problems which even a supernatural 
revelation makes plain to his spiritualized consciousness. For it must 
be remembered that Christianity does not settle every thing, and re- 
veals no truth, after a philosophic method. Revealed truths have a 
method of their own, so that the philosophic method of inquiry though 
different from, is yet consistent with, the revealed method of super- 
natural truth. The mind will philosophize on revealed truth because 
it is of the nature of mind to philosophize ; revelation does not alter 
the mental structure, or quiet the philosophizing spirit. In the in- 
terpretations of the words of God the philosophizing spirit is as help- 
ful as in the investigation of the works of God. 

Greek philosophy, in its bearings on or relation to Christianity, 
can hardly be reproached with failure. In its monotheism, in its 
doctrine of immortality, in its teachings concerning future rewards 
and punishments, and even in its perverted conceptions of morality 
and justice, it prepared the way for apostles and inspired teachers of 
truth. Measured by its absolute results in ontology, psychology, and 
cosmology, a different estimate must be pronounced, but it sustained 
for a time a close relation to practical Christianity. 

The break-down of philosophy is a serious, an unfortunate fact. 
Admitting its services, its heroic labors, its permanent results, and 
attaching great value to its spirit of inquiry, it is clear that it has 
not realized its aims in the ascertainment of v final truth, nor has it 
comforted the intellectual anxieties of the race. That it has had 
sufficient time for trial, that its great systems have been tested both 
by psychological and religious standards, and that its utter inadequacy 
to perform the tasks assigned it has been pointed out with every re- 
curring age of thought, must be manifest to all readers and observers 
of the world's intellectual history. Thales was no greater failure 
than Herbert Spencer ; the latter went deeper into the materialism 
which the former proposed. In general terms, philosophy failed in 
what it undertook to do — a failure consistent with valuable services 
and invaluable results. As Dr. Schliemann has not fully authenti- 
cated Homer's Iliad by his excavations in Asia Minor, but has already 
furnished the materials for the rewriting of Trojan history, so the 
philosopher has not accomplished his purpose, and yet he has ren- 
dered invaluable service to the cause of truth. 

It is evident that the problems of philosophy are the prob- 
lems of religion. Each grapples with their solution by different 
methods. Religion chants revelations ; philosophy deduces truth from 



SPHERE OF ONTOLOGICAL INQUIRY. 309 

observation and reason. The one is a system of truths ; the other a 
system of speculation. The one appeals to the reverent instinct for 
supernatural truth; the other addresses the rational, inquiring spirit. 
In their earlier history the two came in conflict, but it was the con- 
flict of method. The aims of both were the same, the methods differ- 
ent. Antagonism, instead of fraternity, was the result. One went 
into superstition — the other into speculation. Neither solved the 
problems at issue ; both demonstrated the need of a religion that, in 
itself superhuman, would affirm the truth whose scientific develop- 
ment might be left to human reason. However, the philosophic 
method was chiefly in fault ; this was, and is, the occasion of conflict. 
It is exclusive in its spirit, and independent in its inquiry. The re- 
ligious method involves the philosophical ; but the philosophical ab- 
jures the religious, as if it were inimical to a right conception of 
truth and a successful pursuit of it. The philosophic method and the 
religious spirit are compatible, but they were early divorced, resulting 
in inefficient methods of inquiry, and limited and imperfect solutions 
of problems. This characteristic, and the consequent failure, we shall 
discover as we follow the track of philosophic investigation. 

The sphere of ontological inquiry affords ample illustration of the 
incompetency of the philosophic method for the ascertainment of 
truth. Of all questions, that of " being" is confessedly the most mys- 
terious, as it is the most fundamental. It is admitted that there is 
no such thing as pure being, separate from associations, conditions, 
activities, and manifestations; but there is absolute, essential being, 
which per se is not a subject of observation. The difference between 
being and becoming, or being and non-being, or being and phenomena, 
has been recognized in philosophic circles, but the marks of difference 
have not been thoroughly indicated or drawn. It is one thing to 
admit a difference ; it is another to describe it. In discussing matter 
or phenomena, the laws, properties, and forms are certain to be con- 
sidered ; but Kant raised the inquiry if there is not a thing-in-itself, 
a somewhat that constitutes the essence or reality of matter, of which 
the forms and properties are the suitable expression. The Eleatic 
was indisposed to recognize the existence of matter at all, and mod- 
ern philosophy has limited our knowledge of it to phenomena or 
property. Over this lower problem of the reality of matter philos- 
ophy has struggled from the beginning, vibrating from the ' ' flux " 
of Heraclitus to the idealism of Emerson, without determining what 
is the becoming, or the essence of matter. Advancing beyond phe- 
nomena, and grasping the problem of being as distinguished from 
non-being, it makes less progress, for it deals with a mysterious fact. 
It discusses, but can not define being. It endows it with intelligence, 



310 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

wisdom, power, will, but allows it no moral virtues or convictions. 
Being is a vague condition of existence, receding, like the horizon, as 
it is approached, but illuminating phenomena, and is the inspiration 
of the universe. Between them there is a boundary line, but it is 
never reached. 

In philosophy the idea of the First Cause is enveloped with this 
vagueness. Spoken of as the Absolute, or Infinite, the terms are 
almost meaningless for the want of definition. So long as the idea 
of being is obscure and indefinite, the idea of absolute being, or a 
personal God, must be intangible and mysterious. 

With a singular persistence in perversity, philosophy acknowl- 
edges the necessity of being, but denies the possibility of any knowl- 
edge of it. Kant affirms the existence of God as a postulate of the 
Practical Reason, or as a moral necessity of thought, but concedes 
the weakness of the speculative proof of the idea. Sir William 
Hamilton insists upon the prerequisite of faith in God, at the same 
time that he alleges a knowledge of him impossible. Before the 
Bible can be accepted as a volume of revealed truth, James Mill 
contended that the moral attributes of God must be proved ; but he 
maintained that the proof had not been and could not be produced. 
Still later, in Herbert Spencer, philosophy pronounces God "un- 
knowable," precisely the belief of the earlier, and also "unthinkable," 
the very latest expression of agnostic, belief touching the Absolute 
Being. Through these different stages of unbelief respecting a per- 
sonal being philosophy has passed, anchoring itself at last in a radical, 
atheistic agnosticism, which, while waiting for proof, denies the idea 
of God as even conceivable. At the very highest point, it fails ; 
where it should be the strongest it is weakest. It is without a theism 
of any kind ; the universe is without a personal presence ; the uni- 
versal power manifested is an impregnable mystery. 

To dispense with the idea of God must lead to the subversion of 
all correlated ideas, and involve the whole fraternity of religious 
truths in wreck. Without God, religion of any kind is impossible. 
Not only the death-knell of one religion, but of all religions, is 
sounded by the philosophic trumpet. Without God, moral distinc- 
tions are dreamy imaginations; the Bible turns into a book of 
fables; and the thought of immortality is a pleasant deception. In 
overthrowing the foundation the whole superstructure falls. Philos- 
ophy may revolt against the impiety of its decisions, and shrink with 
horror from the darkness of its conclusions, but that its spirit is 
essentially chaotic, and destructive of eternal principles, can be fairly 
established against it. 

We next notice that philosophy, as applied to the historic course 



CO-OPERATION OF FORCES. 311 

of civilization, has misinterpreted its genesis, and the development of 
the forms of civilization, besides misunderstanding the processes by 
which its forms were secured. From what does the social and political 
condition of mankind spring ? In other words, what is the warp and 
woof of history ? To confine the reply to the presence and demon- 
stration of certain physical factors or elements would be to exclude 
the more vital spirit of history. For instance, to say that civilization 
is the outgrowth of military influence, though war is a staple color in 
the historic fabric, would be a colossal absurdity. To say that the 
ambitions of rulers furnish an explanation of the political movements 
of the world, would be equally fallacious. Deeper than these streams 
are undercurrents which touch and shake the foundations, involving 
thrones and peoples in perpetual vibrations. Beneath the visible 
mutations of an age are forces at work that determine the final results 
of movement on the surface, and fix the order of progress for the re- 
motest future. No student of history can fail to see that these under- 
forces may be classified as material and moral, co-operating for the 
assertion of a given purpose, and the evolution of a predetermined 
plan. By " material" forces we mean that aggregation of influences 
that, beginning with purely physical agencies and conditions, such as 
climate, food, and soil, ascend until they include the purely secular 
agencies, such as pursuits, governments, ambitions, armies, and every 
thing potent outside of the still higher, or purely moral and intel- 
lectual agencies of society. By "moral" forces we mean the aggre- 
gation of all the religious, artistic, aesthetic, and rational influences 
which may be summoned into the conflict for human elevation. 

The line is clearly drawn, the propelling forces of civilization are 
at once recognized. One might intelligently suspect that all these 
regenerating forces had entered into the composition of a civilization 
so complex as ours, but philosophy refuses so broad a generalization, 
since it involves a concession to religion, which she is resolved not to 
make. Besides, it is frequently hinted that religious truths and in- 
stitutions are rather the products of civilization than its fountain-head, 
which implies the transfer of the problem of origin from civilization 
to religion. The relation of civilization to religion is the philosophic 
form of the problem ; the relation of religion to civilization is the 
theologic form of the problem. It is a question of antecedence, 
which, until settled, will not allow the reign of the religious idea in 
history. Without attempting to settle the order of relationship be- 
tween these forces, it is enough to state that history is indebted to 
one or the other, and, in fact, to both, as instrumental elements in its 
development. That physical agencies, such as climate, language, na- 
tionality, soil, food, and the like have affected man's social condition, 



312 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

and initiated political governments in all their variety, it were vain 
to dispute. The torrid zone must produce a different race of 
people from the temperate zone, and the frigid zone a people still dif- 
ferent in national impulses and social habits. As a result of climatic 
and material conditions, there are different races, with physical pecu- 
liarities distinguishing them from one another, and with social im- 
pulses, which have found expression in different forms of government 
and different religious faiths. Taking up the subject at this point, 
Buckle, Grote, and others carry it forward until they pretend to dem- 
onstrate that all history is the result of the interaction of material 
forces, which are in themselves sufficient to account for the highest 
types of government and religion. 

Admitting material agency in civilization, its limitations must be 
made transparent. To interpret history by the materialistic principle 
alone would be very like interpreting Washington's monument by the 
amount of stone it contains. The materials of the monument are one 
thing ; the idea of the monument is another. The materials of his- 
tory and the material forces of civilization constitute one class of 
facts, not by any means to be inconsiderately passed over ; but the 
idea of history, and the intellectual forces in harmony with it, consti- 
tute an entirely different class of facts, which can not be ignored or 
impugned except at the risk of making a false interpretation of the 
whole. The lordship of man over nature is his prophetic destiny. 
He assumes the position of lord, not because the Scriptures fore- 
shadow this relation, but because his superiority fits him for dominion. 
His commission requires him to subdue the natural world, to chain 
and guide t*he natural forces, and to rise from a servant of nature to 
the position of master. If history is but the outcome of material 
forces, then nature is master, and man is servant. In proportion as 
he breaks with nature — that is, controls natural forces — and is con- 
queror in the dominion of the natural, does he attain to his rightful 
position as lord. Instead of material agencies producing civilizations, 
one should expect the spirit of civilization to exercise dominion over 
material agencies. This reverses Buckle's materialism, but a pyramid 
looks better to stand upon its base than its apex. 

The truth is, man has been struggling for supremacy ever since 
he was delivered to the world, or the world bequeathed to him ; he 
has been anxious to understand his relations to nature ; he has inquired 
concerning the laws by which she produces her forms ; he desires a 
knowledge of her forces : he is a student of her plans ; and it can not 
be denied that he is gradually extending his authority throughout the 
entire realm. Instead of the material conquering him, he has con-, 
quered the material, and natural conditions are the product of man's 



CONFLICTING ELEMENTS, 313 

presence and sovereignty. The material has not dictated history, but 
history is a revelation of the dictating power of man. Buckle reads 
history with blind eyes. 

The 'philosophic conception of government and education is from the 
same materialistic stand-point ; that is, governmental policies and edu- 
cational systems must be determined by the united facts of geog- 
raphy, geology, meteorology, and physiology, a low basis for lofty 
structures. Creeping like reptiles on the ground, the materialists can 
not look up ; the philosophic basis of the best institutions must be 
dust, or, as Carlyle - roughly phrases it, it is a " Gospel of dirt" that 
these materialists preach and enforce. Mill says the end of govern- 
ment is public good, but as he does not define the word " good," the 
statement is ambiguous. Grote has accepted the associational or evo- 
lutional principle as an explanation of the governmental idea, but it 
is materialistic in essence, and quite as inadequate as a theory as 
Buckle's more pronounced physiological hypothesis. In whatever direc- 
tion we turn we encounter materialism in one form or another as the 
active principle, and fatalism as the silent spirit in history. 

That another explanation is possible ; that another spirit controls 
in historic manifestations ; that other elements conspire in civilization, 
we hesitate not to affirm, and immediately submit the proof. Since 
the beginning of history the moral forces have played a conspicuous 
part in government, education, reforms, and social movements, and it 
is not too much to say that they constitute the core of all the pro- 
cesses of civilization. Because of irreconcilable differences between 
the moral and the material, history presents the sad spectacle of irrec- 
oncilable conflict between the higher and the lower, or the natural and 
the intellectual. Both can not be dominant ; like Castor and Pollux, 
one can live only when the other is dead. The conflict of forces has 
never been rightly estimated by the materialist or physiologist, nor is 
it quite certain that the moral speculatist has comprehended the sig- 
nificance of the issue. The ebbings and flowings of human history 
have been the rising and falling of the material and the moral, some- 
times alternately, but never contemporaneously, for the two can not 
co-exist, except in hostile relations. When the material has been in 
the ascendant, grossness of national life has been the result. Infidel 
France is a striking illustration of this statement. When the moral 
has been triumphant there has been advancement toward a national 
ideal, and public good has been conserved. History is a vibration be- 
tween the material and the moral, philosophy allying itself with the 
descending, and Christianity with the ascending, forces. 

In this hand-to-hand conflict the moral, less obtrusive than the 
material, has nevertheless been visible, or its presence has been 



314 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

detected, and moral progress may be affirmed as the result. Steadily, 
moral forces are triumphing ; revolutions, quickened often by the 
material spirit, end in moral victories; and the swing of the world 
is toward a Universal moral conquest. For the future, then, we may 
confidently anticipate the regnancy of the moral forces over the 
material, whose subordination, however slowly wrought out, will finally 
be complete. 

In its interpretation of the government of the world, philosophy* 
has exhibited more than its usual bigotry of spirit or inability to 
comprehend all the facts included in the problem. Pessimism is a 
corner-word in philosophy. Deeming the world under a system of 
misrule for which there is no remedy, the pessimist cries out against 
it and condemns the cruelty which has inspired it. The banishment 
of God from the universe, and the false interpretation of the historic 
momentum, naturally prepare the mind for the pessimistic conception 
of government. Without a thinkable and knowable God ; without a 
system of moral forces in operation ; the government of the world 
appears to the pessimist like the merest accident, and disorder is the 
natural result. Without a supreme power intelligently and mercifully 
guiding the lives of men, they must run into danger and be enveloped 
in darkness. Pessimism is the inevitable product of materialism. 
Schopenhauer, dismantling the theistic idea, and reducing the divine 
sovereignty to an imbecile will-force, drifted into a hollow and nerve- 
less conception of Providence, which invalidated all hopes, enervated 
all desires, and spread gloom over his whole life. 

One of the weaknesses of the pessimist is his habit of observing 
and magnifying the admitted evils of the world to the exclusion of 
the good that is equally manifest, and his inability after comparing 
the evil and the good, to perceive an excess of good in the divine ad- 
ministration. He it is who raises the question, "Is life worth 
living ?" "Recently Mr. Mallock, a Koman Catholic writer, has taken 
up the pessimistic question in a semi-philosophical way, and answered 
it in the negative. Schopenhauer said it is better "not to be" than 
" to be." In this question all men have a vital, because it is a per- 
sonal, interest, yet it can not be solved summarily or imperatively. 
It is a question of comparison of facts ; neither side can be ignored. 
We dwell amid shadows, and we know only in part ; we see only the 
smallest openings through the dark-browed clouds that fill the sky. 
Human life is a pent-up mystery ; the world at times is refractory 
and dull. Through feeble, if not a perturbed, vision we do not see 
things as they are, and are prone to misjudge the ruling spirit, and 
pronounce against the decrees of the throne. Considering by them- 
selves the evils of life, Buddha taught the mischievous and hopeless 



INABILITIES OF PESSIMISM. 315 

doctrine of nirvana, or that release from the world and absorption 
with the supreme Good will be most fortunate. The idea of death 
awakens music in the soul ; the idea of life produces a monotone of 
despair. Consistently he authorized the means of death, such as dis- 
ease, crime, self-murder, any thing to secure the release of the soul 
from its bondage to matter, any thing that would conduct to eternal 
freedom, though it involve eternal silence or annihilation of conscious 
existence. This was the philosophy, not the religion, of Buddha. In 
any form whatever, Paganism substantially accords with this inter- 
pretation of life. It degrades it into a hopeless ruin ; it robs it of the 
possibilities of development; it points to a future of uncertain ex- 
istence or substantial annihilation. 

Is pessimism a factor of civilization? It is not, but its shadow falls 
occasionally on the thinker, who finds it difficult to account for the 
sway of evil in this world, who sees that man is handicapped with 
heredities, mortgaged with infirmities, and doomed to a grave ; and 
he pauses to wonder at the apparent insensibility of the divine ruler, 
who might order a different state of things. There is at times a 
seeming undervaluation of life, of its swelling significance, of its 
growing possibilities, of its world-wide relationships, and of its final 
adjustments. Even those not disposed to bad dreams, men who never 
have the dyspepsia, who never see the world going to pieces, philan- 
thropists who are never exhausted or discouraged, and statesmen who 
are never disheartened and never grow weary, sometimes indulge in 
gloomy forebodings touching life, the human race, and the great world. 
The spirit of sin menaces every human being ; storms bewilder every 
pilgrim ; misery is universal ; the invisible ruler of the nether world 
strikes like an invisible Gyges whomsoever he will ; God seems im- 
passive and impersonal ; and the suspicion that possibly life is a mis- 
take gnaws like a vulture at human hopes, and men are afraid. The 
disadvantages of the present life are too many to be unobserved, and 
too severe and debilitating to be estimated as trifles. Man enters the 
world, helpless, dependent, exposed to forces he can not control, under 
laws he does not understand, the victim of an environment he did not 
originate. Physical evils are so abundant as to fill him with fear, and 
often so terrible as to prostrate and destroy him. Earthquakes, vol- 
canoes, water-spouts, electrical discharges, atmospheric commotions, 
famine, pestilence, heat and cold, all the vicissitudes of the natural 
world, seem in league against him, oppressing and taxing him beyond 
his power of endurance. 

To none of these things is a denial made ; but, granting the pres- 
ence of evil, is there ground for pessimistic inferences? One is not 
compelled to choose between optimism and pessimism, the two 



316 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

extremes respecting the government of the world, for it is neither the 
best possible nor the worst conceivable, but it is in a transition state 
from a crude form to that which is absolutely perfect. It can not be 
that the present government is the best, but it is becoming the best 
through discipline and the subordination of evil to righteousness. If 
the Captain of our salvation was made perfect through suffering, then 
the world-life of man, which includes the government over him as 
well as that in him, by a similar process may be developed and be 
made to harmonize with the highest ideals of order and perfection. 
Struggle, discipline, conflict with evil, fear of danger, liability to 
overthrow, are steps to a higher condition. When the purpose of life 
and the fruits of discipline are weighed, the mixed government of the 
world has an explanation, and pessimism retreats like an owl 
into a cave. 

Besides, the comparative range of evil, or the excess of good, in 
human history is sufficient to cancel the force of the pessimistic 
declaration. As one surveys the universe the conviction spontaneously 
arises that it is framed according to a benevolent idea, working itself 
out by manifold methods in benevolent results ; and, looking at the 
course of history, one is impressed that the idea of good is dominant 
in human affairs, and that the presence of evil is an accident some 
time to be overcome and removed. This large view must precede any 
study of details, or the study will be valueless. The idea of the world 
must first be understood before its complex movements can be 
analyzed or a single discordant feature explained. Of physical evils 
how great the sum, but they are counterbalanced by the flowers, the 
valleys, the landscapes, the cataracts, the mountains, the fruits and 
grains, or the beauties and the blessings of nature. A judgment ac- 
customed to the discernment of occult differences, and expert in com- 
paring facts, must at once discover the excess of good in the natural 
world, and this excess is the representation or sign of the benevolent 
spirit that underlies the providential administration over man. It is 
good in itself, and good in its provisions, adaptations, and possibilities. 

Passing from untoward external evils, it is contended that man's 
condition in itself is one of pitiable and helpless embarrassments and 
restraints, of which no denial is made. His natural ignorance, his 
feeble physical powers, his limited intellectual acquisitions, and his 
uncertainty touching the future, are proofs of man's ignoble state, 
justifying the pessimistic conclusion. Additionally, the condition of 
those more unfortunate than the majority, in the partial or total loss 
of reason, and incurable infirmities and deformities of the body, may 
be used in resistance of the idea of a benevolent government of the 
world. The insane, the idiotic, the blind, the deaf, the dumb, the 



PESSIMISM ONE-SIDED. 317 

walking skeleton, the invalid of inherited maladies, speak loudly 
against the present order of life. Even the social and industrial con- 
ditions of life are under influences that imperil society, and, un- 
checked, will degrade man. The point is made, that the structure of 
man's world-life, which he did not create or frame, is such as to ad- 
mit of the social and industrial oppression of man ; whereas, in a 
wise, and especially a perfect, government, there ought to be no 
room for despotism, disease, or sin. The poverty of the race, the 
unequal distribution of riches, the hardships of the laboring classes, 
the degradation arising from pauperism and slavery to toil, the suffer- 
ing that such conditions entail, and the hopelessness of relief, declare 
against the justice and goodness of the divine administration, and 
furnish weapons for the pessimist. 

Nor is the list of social evils yet complete. By reason of igno- 
rance and selfishness, nations are led to differ respecting their rights ; 
the difference appeals to the sword; war ensues, and nations grieve. 
The tramp of the soldier has been heard in every land; the roar 
of cannon and the flash of cimeter are not new to any people. War 
is the staple of history, and one nation is often the product of the 
ruin of another. Why this antagonism of man to man? Why the 
absence of harmony in the world ? 

With all these evils as his inheritance, there is the appalling fact 
of the inevitable brevity of life, which haunts every man and pursues 
him until it can pursue no longer. As he begins to shake off the 
nightmare of evil surroundings, and to ascend into better conditions, 
life reaches a termination. 

Adding these facts together, the pessimist seems to have found a 
footing for his dismal proclamation. Under the pressure of affliction, 
Job complained that he had been born, and was ready to surrender 
his life. Elijah, estimating his work a failure, prostrated himself 
beneath a juniper-tree, and solemnly wished for death. Jonah, 
troubled over the turn of affairs at Nineveh, sat within the shade of 
a gourd, and was eager to push out of the world. Under the 
touches of religion, the antidote for despair, these good men were re- 
vived and renewed their calling ; but the suicide and the ungodly, un- 
restrained by the absence of religious convictions, push pessimism to 
its fatal conclusion. Pessimism is the suicidal view of the world, and 
philosophy is responsible for it. 

Another view of the world, or man's relation to it, is possible. 
The idea of life is sweet to the mind ; the word itself is musical to 
the ear of the soul. To live at all ; to have a heart that can beat, a 
brain that permits thought; to have hands, feet, eyes, ears, nose, 
mouth — a body that answers the soul; to be able to communicate 



318 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

with the outer world; to hold relationship to the inner realm of 
being ; to know that we partake of the universal life, — is, as it is 
studied, a source of profound gratification. With all the mystery 
that impends over existence, with its liabilities to misfortune, with 
the supposed misrule of affairs, with the certainty of dissolution, 
life is aD inspiration. Life is a divine product, a divine substance, 
and the earthly friction which it experiences diminishes Dot the 
sacredness of its character, nor affects its eterual value. Looking 
deeper than this general estimate, that is, inquiring into the nature 
and possibilities of human life, the pessimistic teaching of Schopen- 
hauer is more than counterbalanced ; it is overthrown. The marble 
bust of Shakespeare is without possibilities; but the living Shake- 
speare was a prophecy of illimitable development. Aristotle was once 
an infant; the Duke of Wellington once weighed fourteen pounds. 
In infancy life is only a promise, but it is a promise which eventuates 
in realization. The underrating of possibilities, the forgetting of the 
germs of power in man, and the overrating of the frictions, hindrances, 
and disturbances that environ human history, have led to a gloomy 
interpretation of individual life. Keeping the eye on toils, low wages, 
persecutions, infirmities, all of which are external and no essential 
part of man, and neglecting the essential prophecies within us, 
the gravitation toward the despondency of pessimism is easy and 
natural. Solomon says, "a living dog is better than a dead 
lion;" which, being interpreted, is, that life in its lowest stages is 
better than extinction. Life is essential possibility ; death is extinct 
possibility. 

The weakness of pessimism is its omission of God in its calcula- 
tions and interpretations. The philosophers of Greece and Rome dis- 
cussed with earnestness the old problem of God's relationship to the 
world, and divided in their conclusions ; some asserting that he is in- 
sensible to man's dangers, needs, and sufferings; others, that he 
regards only the great and vital issues of the world, while there were 
few who comprehended the great truth that not a sparrow falls with- 
out the Father's notice. Without God, without his constant interpo- 
sition in human affairs, without his superintendency of the world, 
there must be friction, collisions, darkness, death. With God as the 
Father, Ruler, Benefactor, Redeemer, man lives in hope, and lifts up 
his head in every storm. Religion reveals God's juxtaposition to the 
world. Religion explains the difficulties of man's temporal life. 
Religion is the cure for pessimism. 

In no department of inquiry is the break-down of philosophy more 
conspicuous and more complete than in its exposition of the genesis 
of life and the origin of the universe, or its attempted settlement of 



MECHANICAL NOTIONS INSUFFICIENT. 319 

the whole problem of being, and its manifestations in the organic 
and inorganic spheres of the phenomenal world. Certain facts must 
be admitted, ab initio, as the conditions of discussion — the facts of 
the world, life, phenomena. Whence life? Whence matter? From 
among the multitude of answers given to these questions, we select 
two as expressive of nearly all that can be said on the subject, two 
answers that are directly opposed in their contents to each other. 
They are the religious or theological, and the scientific or meta- 
physical. The theological account of the world involves the exer- 
cise of the creative power of the Almighty, while the philosophical 
account is a theoretical attempt to trace things back to an alleged 
self-originating propensity in matter, dispensing entirely with the 
divine principle. Overwhelmed with defeat, the labors of the theo- 
rists have not been altogether fruitless; for, in addition to the dis- 
covery of the properties, forces, laws, and functions of matter, they 
have unintentionally rendered the theological conception impreg- 
nable. The strongest defense of the theological idea is the break- 
down* of the metaphysical. 

Without analyzing the mechanical notions of the theorists, it is 
sufficient to state that the problem of origin is practically unsolved, 
and that no light has been thrown upon it. When Helmholtz and 
Sir William Thompson announce that organic germs were originally 
distributed over the earth from other planets by means of aerolites, 
what explanation of the origin of things is given? It shifts the 
origin from one planet to another, but does not explain the origin ; 
in fact, it makes it more mysterious than ever, for this places it be- 
yond our reach. When Huxley declared that bathybius had in it the 
potency of life, it was supposed a great discovery was made; but 
when it was proved that bathybius is nothing more than gypsum, 
even the scientific world smiled at the foolishness of the professor. 
Had his discovery been genuine, it had revealed nothing on origin. 
When the theory of atoms is urged as a sufficient starting-point for 
existence, the problem is simplified, but it is as inexplicable as ever; 
for, if atoms contained the principle of life, it is imperative that the 
origin of life in them be explained. How came an atom in possession 
of any power, any principle? How came there to be an atom 
at all? Conceding that the development theory, if true, partially 
explains the method of the growth of the world, it fails to account 
for the origin of the principle of growth, or for a beginning. If 
it account for the development of species — a matter not yet fully 
substantiated — it does not account for the origination of species. 
The ' ' development theory " is the key to development only, not the 
key to origin. 



320 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

From the mechanical theory of things the history of man or his 
origin presents the same immovable difficulty. The theory of de- 
scent may account for certain historic courses, or certain racial char- 
acteristics or human customs, but it is incompetent to explain the 
first appearance of man. The gulf between man and the animal 
kingdom has not been spanned. Even if the physical man were 
evolved from physical antecedents the difficulty of explaining his in- 
tellectual and moral character would be as great as ever, and require 
another and essentially different exposition. Evolution can not 
explain the conscience, or judgment, or will, or memory. The prim- 
itive races were endowed with intellectual and moral faculties, and 
prehistoric man was as intellectual as the modern man. Evolution 
has added no new faculties to the equipments of the race. It has intro- 
duced nothing new, either in species, which have had fixed types 
from the beginning, or in man, who is to-day a development only 
of what he was in the prehistoric ages. 

Back of all these attempts at world-building without the divine 
energy, back of evolutions and revolutions, back of all theories re- 
specting life, is the profounder problem of life itself. What is it? 
Its origin is one phase of inquiry ; its development is another ; its na- 
ture is primary and fundamental. It will be observed that some 
theories are applied to an exposition of the history of life, or its un- 
foldings in permanent forms ; others boldly assume the task of ferret- 
ing out the beginning or origin of life ; but the nature of life — more 
mysterious than its origin or development — no theorist has been able 
to make transparent, or even define, with any approximation to truth. 
Bichat's definition that life is the " sum of the functions by which death 
is resisted," is no definition at all, for it reduces life to a function or 
purpose. Life is a cause with functions, and not a sum of functions. 
Coleridge defined life as "the principle of individuation";" but a tree 
has individuation. The definition is incomplete. The difference be- 
tween organized matter and inorganized forms has been thoroughly 
specialized, but the materialist would strike at the indestructible bar- 
riers, and reduce the organic to a differentiation of the inorganic. 
Herbert Spencer says, "The chasm between the inorganic and the or- 
ganic is being filled up ;" but it is one thing to make a statement and 
another to prove it when it is called in question. The bridge between 
the organic and inorganic is yet to be built, for the chasm still ex- 
ists. Hackel fancies that organic matter is an "albuminous carbon 
combination," while Du Bois-Keymond interprets it as the mechanical 
principle of atoms. 

With these statements, definitions, and fancies, the student is as 
distant from a proper conception of life and of the world as he was 



SYSTEMS OF ETHICS. 321 

at the beginning. Ponderous systems and theories of high-sounding 
names have been framed in explanation of phenomena, and the inor- 
ganic world has been searched for a clue to the organic ; and the re- 
sult has been a number of hypothetical accounts, which, with their 
limitations, are unsatisfactory and tentative only. This is a mon- 
strous failure. Besides demonstrating the limitations of human 
knowledge, it has demonstrated the incompetency of philosophy to 
settle these inquiries, and has prepared the way for Christianity as an 
explanation of all things, which introduces God as the author of 
life, and fills creation with the splendors of his glory. 

Thus far we have traced the philosophic disclosures respecting the 
lower problems, with occasional hints of the higher, and have wit- 
nessed in every instance, whether the origin of the world or its gov- 
ernment was in question, its complete ignorance of both, and its fail- 
ure to account for either. We pronounce these ' ' lower problems," 
inasmuch as they relate chiefly to material principles, forms, connec- 
tions, and results, and to distinguish them from the moral and relig- 
ious problems in the sphere of which philosophy is dumb, as it is our 
purpose soon to show. If in the lower it has proved a failure, we can 
anticipate nothing better in the higher, where, indeed, it comes to a 
stand-still, and makes no progress whatever. 

The theories respecting mind and intellectual operations; the 
theories of knowledge and their application to both infinite and finite, 
have been almost exhaustively considered in these pages, and need no 
recapitulation here. Herbert Spencer and Alexander Bain are the 
dead-weights in this department, for the one declares God unknow- 
able, and matter unknowable, save in its phenomena, thus branding 
the intellect with imbecility ; and the other predicates mind as the 
product of organization, and ventures to explain its activities on me- 
chanical principles, robbing it of immortality, and man of any great 
destiny. According to both, man is involved in the mechanism which 
produced the universe, and is himself as much a mechanically acting 
organism as any thing within the realms of space and time* Mind 
is the flower of matter. Philosophy has transformed itself into phys- 
iology — this is its failure. 

A more practical phase of philosophic inquiry is its discussion 
of the ethical ehment, involving the construction of systems of moral- 
ity, or the presentation of rules and principles for the government of 
the social and moral relations. The inquiry includes two points : 
1. The origin of ethical or moral distinctions; 2. The value of ethical 
instructions. Touching the origin of moral ideas and discriminations, 
there is a great diversity of views among the philosophers, with little 
approach to uniformity except among the grosser materialists, who 

21 



322 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

t 

resolve ethics, as they do every thing else, into mechanical products. 
Adam Smith's famous doctrine of "sympathy," as the explanation 
of the moral sentiments, is peculiar in form, and immature as a the- 
ory. The intensity of the sympathetic instinct is admitted, but it is 
no stronger than other instincts, and it furnishes no secure basis for 
morality. It makes every man the measure of his morality. It 
does not recognize a uniform outside standard of right, but per- 
mits the sympathetic faculty to make one of its own, by which each 
man becomes the independent judge of what is right and what is 
wrong. 

Hobbes taught that the moral idea is the artificial product of 
law, reversing the historic order of the two principles, for law is the 
effect of moral principle, or of the idea of right and wrong. The en- 
actment of law implies the antecedent idea of right and wrong. Law 
is the expression of that idea. Again, inasmuch as civil law is 
changeable, the moral sentiments dependent on it must be changeable 
also ; hence, the stability of moral ideas, and the permanency of 
moral distinctions might be disturbed by every new enactment, and 
finally be destroyed altogether. The safety of the moral idea is in its 
independence of law, or the caprices of men. 

Mandeville resolved all morality into the efflorescence of the spirit 
of self-love, which in its coarser form is selfishness. In this there -is 
no innate love of right and no constitutional abhorrence of wrong, 
but a determination to right or wrong as the interests of the individ- 
ual are promoted or restrained. This is only another and perhaps 
better form of the utilitarian theory of Hume, who held that the 
virtue or vice of an action must be determined from its beneficial or 
hurtful tendencies. James Mill, ignoring a moral sense in man, and 
renouncing all allegiance to moral sentiments, measures an action by 
Hume's law of utility. 

The most recent exponent of moral ideas is Herbert Spencer, who 
theorizes at length both on the data of ethics and the contents of a 
scientific, as opposed to a supernaturalistic, morality. In the fore- 
ground is the doctrine of altruism, which is nothing else than abso- 
lute selfishness. From this beginning Spencer advances to the sug- 
gestion that moral systems are the result of evolutionary processes, 
which must insure with the passage of the centuries a fixed and pos- 
sibly complete system of ethics. Ethical systems are still in a transi- 
tion state, undergoing silent changes, and ripening slowly with the in- 
tellectual advances of the race. Originally there were no ethical 
ideas, but they were invented or formulated as the necessities of the 
social condition required, at first being crude and often inimical to 
public good, but, as human relations were more thoroughly considered, 



THE ETHICAL IDEA. 323 

the ideas of right and wrong took more definite form, and were appro- 
priated as guides in social life. Moral convictions are, therefore, the 
products of evolution. In his " Data of Ethics" Spencer makes a 
broad distinction between absolute and relative ethics, and attempts 
to show that an ideal or absolute system of ethics can not arise from 
a knowledge of, or relations to, the unconditioned, but must be the 
product of relations suggested by the conditioned, which robs the 
moral idea of its divine origin, and reduces it to a result of human 
adjustment of relations. Conduct is the product of the adjustment 
of man to his condition. Divine principles are not involved in this 
adjustment ; it is a human effort to establish harmony between inner 
and outer conditions. If one succeed in perfecting the adjustment his 
ethical life will be blameless; but if he fail he goes down under 
the wrath of the stronger outer conditions. The idea of absolute 
morality is foreign to all philosophic schemes. What is called " Oc- 
camism " is an approach to it, but Mansel objected to it, and, point- 
ing out the apparent weaknesses of the moral faculty, he announced 
his belief in a relative morality only. This strikes at the doctrine of 
inherent rightness. If right is a relation, or the expression of a rela- 
tive condition only, the standard of right can not be fixed or uniform, 
for relations and conditions vary. Right is absolute, or its authority 
is gone. 

Ethical naturalism is as defective as evolutionary ethics. Hackel, 
maintaining the mechanical conception of the universe, includes man 
in the mechanical arrangement, which implies his want of freedom. 
If man is not free, but a cog in the wheel, he is not responsible, and 
ethical distinctions vanish. To this conclusion Hackel goes at a 
bound, and rejoices in it. It means the overthrow of the ethical 
government, and the correlated ideas of future responsibility and the 
possibility of future punishment. Mr. Darwin was reproached for 
the ethical weakness of his theories, but it is allowed that his disciples 
carried the destructive work farther than he anticipated or desired. 
Rudolf Schmid affirms that ethical naturalism means the dissolution 
of all moral principles. 

Separating these philosophic suggestions, or aggregating them, 
what is their significance ? What becomes of the ethical spirit ? If 
the moral idea is the product of law, or arises from an observed 
utility of action, or from the indulgence of self-love, or the practice 
of selfishness, or is evolutionally produced, or is a feature of the 
mechanism of the universe, what sacredness can attach to it? What 
authority has it ? How can it be enforced ? As it is not supernat- 
ural in origin, it may not be imposed from supernatural considera- 
tions; and as God is not behind or in it, it is only a prudential 



324 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

rule of conduct, to be observed as necessities or conditions may sug- 
gest, in which event it is without authoritative character. To be 
effective, however, the moral sentiment must be obligatory; and it 
can not be obligatory unless grounded in superior authority. Systems 
of morality framed according to these conceptions must be defective 
in representation, and as powerless in influence as the conceptions 
themselves. As a result, human concepts of sympathy, utility, legal 
justice, and equity will be dominant, while the divine ideas of 
benevolence, virtue, truth, and holiness will be absent, except as 
they are dragged down to the level of the human or mechanical, 
in which Case they would be as powerless as mechanical ideas 
themselves. 

Other theories, half philosophic and half religious, and in advance 
of the preceding, concerning the rise of the moral idea, have ap- 
peared, bridging the distance from philosophy to religion. Lord 
Shaftesbury pronounced in favor of a moral sense in man, by which 
he is able to detect the virtue or vice of actions, a conception that 
was previously elaborated by Hutcheson. Clarke traced the moral 
idea to the intuitions, giving it a psychological basis. Cudworth, be- 
lieving that an ethical decision involved a rational perception and 
comparison of motives and facts, attributed the final moral discrim- 
ination to the reason; while Butler rose still higher in attributing it 
to the conscience. 

The superiority of these views to the utilitarian and evolutional 
theories must be apparent without discussion. If the latter are cor- 
rect, fixed and invariable ethical standards are out of the question ; 
if the former obtain, uniform and authoritative ideas of right and 
wrong may be installed in the activities of the world. Grounded in 
the intuitions, the reason, and the conscience, there can be no varia- 
tion, and they may be enforced by sanctions which can not be dis- 
puted. Moreover, while the philosophical systems, inasmuch as they 
spring from external conditions and relations, are conditional systems 
of morality, the intuitional systems, taking their rise in the moral 
and intellectual nature of man, are unconditional, and therefore uni- 
form and universal. 

Yet, that the ethical notion has for its sole or chief source the 
moral nature of man, we are not prepared to affirm. This is an ad- 
vance over the conclusions of the materialists, but we can not stop 
here. The ethical idea has its root in the divine being, or is the off- 
shoot of the theistic influence, which, descending into the conscience 
and reason, makes itself felt in intuitive affirmation of right and 
wrong. This is its highest source ; it is too high, however, for philos- 
ophy. In the interpretation of the moral instincts, in its systems of 



FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHY. 325 

morality, in the character and authority of its ethical instructions, 
philosophy has completely failed. The total of its teachings is that 
every man should do the best he can for himself in given conditions, 
being governed by considerations of utility and self-interest. 

Plainly, too, philosophy, pretending to reveal the secret of things, 
has failed in pointing out the secret of true happiness, and in sug- 
gesting methods for the satisfaction of the holiest aspirations of the 
soul ; and, were it to be judged by its own principle of utilitarian- 
ism, it would be summarily rejected. The conviction that the prin- 
ciples of philosophy are not sufficient, when enthusiastically espoused, 
to produce abiding contentment, unless cold resignation to fate be hon- 
ored with this distinction, is abundantly sustained by the principles 
themselves, and by the lives of philosophers, many of whom have 
been pessimists, fatalists, and materialists. Ignorance of God, the 
theory that the world is misgoverned, the hope of immortality re- 
duced to a myth, thought pronounced a secretion, mental activity 
substantially a nervous impulse, and man a descendant of the animal 
kingdom — these and such ideas are not calculated to relieve the world 
of gloom and pain, or introduce sunlight into the abodes and pursuits 
of the race. By such teachings one is not made strong for tempta- 
tion, nor is he comforted when trial comes, nor enlightened as the 
shadows lengthen. Fate, Csesarism, disease, chains, are not inspiring 
words, yet they are the pass-words of materialistic philosophy. Epi- 
curus, denying immortality, pledged his life to pleasure, but it was a 
hollow mockery, and fruitless of good. That man who bought the 
earthen lamp of Epictetus, in the hope that he could get wisdom 
from it, was not more foolish than the man who would buy the cup of 
Epicurus in the belief that pleasure is hidden in it. Adam Smith asked, 
" What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who 
is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?" What of the majority 
of mankind, who are without health, and are poor and in debt, and 
ignorant, and with consciences unenlightened? Something more is 
wanted than health, riches, and a conscience. Schopenhauer hated 
his mother, despised womankind, and drew dark pictures of life. 
J. S. Mill was a proverbial example of unhappiness, the victim of an 
inherited and enforced philosophy. Aristotle held that the life of 
pleasure, the life of ambition, and the life of knowledge, constitute 
the life of happiness ; but pleasure sought for its own sake is a fail- 
ure, ambition has often resulted in ruin, and culture even has its 
drawbacks. Consider any scheme of happiness formulated by philos- 
ophy, and essential elements will be wanting. Thus the break-down 
is patent. 

The review of philosophy as a failure requires at least an inci- 



326 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

dental allusion to the insufficiency of its reflections and teachings 
concerning essential religious truth. Since philosophy must not be 
confounded with religion, any estimate of the one from the stand- 
point of the other may seem unwarranted ; but it must be remem- 
bered that the avowed purpose of the philosophical teacher is to 
supplant the religious teacher, which implies that he has something 
better to offer than religion. James Mill looked upon religion as a 
social force, and Herbert Spencer tolerates it as a myth. The ulti- 
matum of philosophy is the abandonment of religion, but it offers 
nothing in exchange for atonement, inspiration, resurrection, immor- 
tality, heaven ; it offers nothing in exchange for the world's Creator 
and Governor, the holy Sabbath, the doctrine of moral responsibility, 
and the pleasing thought of man's creation in the image of God. It 
demands much, but gives nothing in return. Aristotle said the 
philosopher is a devotee of fable. He was right. What fables are 
pessimism, utilitarianism, Epicureanism, altruism, materialism, atom- 
ism, and the whole brood of evolutionary hypotheses ! Religion is 
not a "cunningly devised fable," but the truth, and nothing but 
the truth. 

The field of philosophy is a field of ruins. It reminds us of 
Baalbec, with temples in decay, with pillars broken, defaced, and 
scarred, with worshipers absent, and music and sacrifices wanting. 
Sensationalism, Idealism, Positivism, Pessimism, and Associationalism 
are the prostrate pillars in the garden of the world ; the temple of 
worship is without an altar; and the world's throne is without a 
Ruler. For this decay, this ruin, this break-down, there is a cause ; 
and it is either in the nature of philosophy itself or in the perverted 
aims of the philosophers. Philosophy itself is a legitimate child of 
thought, but the philosopher is a prodigal, wasting the substance of 
the Father in riotous demonstrations, and mocking at the heavenly 
visions with which he is sometimes favored. He needs to turn his 
head upward, to ride on Ezekiel's wheels or Zechariah's horses until 
he reaches the azure heights, or ascends John's mountains, from 
whose summits he may catch glimpses of the ineffable glory of the 
celestial sphere. A new phase of philosophy, or an independent 
grappling with the great mysteries of ontology, psychology, and cos- 
mology must occur before its redemption from materialism is possible. 
It has sight — it needs insight ; it has perseverance — it needs power ; 
it has mechanism — it needs life ; it has nature — it needs God. 

In the contemplation of the various systems of speculative thought, 
in their relation to human interests, scarcely a satisfactory result has 
been obtained. In the study of ontological truth, mystery, vaster and 
deeper than the supernaturalism of religion, is proposed to our 



FUNDAMENTALS OR PERSONALITIES. 327 

acceptance. Inquiring for biological results, life is presented as an 
atomic mechanism ; seeking psychological principles, the mind turns 
out to be a mechanically-derived and a mechanically-acting Thing ; 
studying nature, causation is reduced to succession, and final cause is 
denied an existence; and as for man, his origin is obscurely derived 
from animals, and his destiny is involved in that of the universe. 

For the greater part these conclusions are denials of facts, beliefs, 
and principles, which, from the earliest periods, have been accepted 
by the popular judgment of the race as correct, and as being rooted 
in consciousness and the developments of history. Yet this negative 
philosophy calls itself positive; this azoic philosophy styles itself 
protoplastic ; this severe philosophy calls itself benevolent ; this an- 
tagonistic, undermining, pillar-throwing, soul-hlotting philosophy dares to 
claim that it is progressive ! Evidently, there is something wrong 
somewhere. These systems are comets, not stars ; revolutions, not 
reformations ; novels, not Bibles. 

The root-defect of such speculations is seen in the difference be- 
tween the organic purpose of philosophy on the one hand, and the 
organic purpose of religion on the other. The ultimate of philosophy 
is — fundamentals ; the ultimate of religion is — personalities. Fun- 
damentals embrace principles, laws, facts, agencies , forces ; personalities 

INCLUDE BEINGS, INTELLIGENCES, CONSCIOUS EXISTENCES. Philoso- 
phy, roving among the fundamentals, does not rise to the personal- 
ities of the universe ; hence it talks, but can not explain. It eulo- 
gizes gravitation, as did Comte ; it bows before the uniformity and 
unity of law, as does Huxley ; it creates an unconscious, imper- 
sonal First Cause, as do Schopenhauer and Hartmann ; but it knows 
nothing of the living, personal, omnipresent Jehovah, or of man's 
relation to him. Philosophy reveals facts, laws, methods, principles ; 
religion reveals cause, intelligence, being, personal authorship. 

The reconstruction of philosophy is imperative, as it stops short of 
triumph. Its achievement is that of the chemist, who can decompose 
and recompose crystals, but who can not compose life. Personality is 
the only ultimate of thought, the original source of all things. Philosophy 
has concerned itself with relativities, not with absolute truth ; with 
phenomena, not with primary cause. It must go beyond fundamen- 
tals ; it must advance toward the great Personality ; then its recon- 
struction will be complete. 

During the reign of the Thirty Tyrants in Athens a law was 
enacted prohibiting conversations on philosophical themes in the city. 
Tyrannical was the decree ; better far an order that it shall take a 
broader view; that, dropping fables, it shall embrace truths; that, 
heralding fundamentals, it shall march upward to personalities. 



328 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Neither atheism, nor pantheism, nor pessimism is productive of enthu- 
siasm, generosity, social order, or the elements of a progressive civili- 
zation. Materialistic philosophy is the incubus of the age. 

Clearly and sufficiently has the necessity for a religion that in- 
cludes the highest truth, concreted in personal intelligences, been 
demonstrated ; and since philosophy, even in its best estate, has failed 
to furnish the required truth, we turn with confidence to that form 
of religion which, rising to heights illuminated with celestial light, 
or descending from summits burning with a supernatural glory, pro- 
poses to answer the universal question, namely, Christianity. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE RELATION OF* PHILOSOPHY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

IN a classification of contributing elements to religion, or in an at- 
tempt to do justice to auxiliaries in the development of religious 
truth, philosophy should be accorded a conspicuous place. As a tree 
is indebted to soil, moisture, light, heat, and the atmosphere, so the 
best system of religion has derived its character and strength from, a 
multitude of forces and influences, not one of which should be for- 
gotten in the final estimate or historic conception of religion. Far 
too common is it either to ascribe to Christianity an exclusive Jewish 
background, regarding the pre-Christian idea as the root of the Chris- 
tian system, or to discern in it only the supernatural factor that gives 
it its high value. The intimate relation of other things not essentially 
religious to religious truth will be acknowledged more and more as an 
impartial tracing of the origin of Christianity is conducted, and the 
useful elements of outside systems of thought are properly recognized. 
Outside of the accepted preliminary religious influences that aided 
in the introduction of Christianity, philosophy performed a service in 
the interest of the true religion, both in its preliminary work and its 
radical teachings, that should not be despised. What that work was, 
what its revelations and teachings were, and so what the debt of Chris- 
tionity to philosophy is, we shall attempt to disclose. Philosophy is 
not religion, and sometimes it has lacked the religious spirit, being 
bent in the pursuit of ends strictly special to its calling ; but it has 
opened many a door, parted many a cloud, and held in its hands 
some truths that we now see were antitypes of things to follow. It is 
not ritualistic in form, sacrificial in spirit, mediatory in method, or 
merciful in its aims ; yet has it pointed out the religious factor in 



PHILOSOPHIC ICONOCLASM. 329 

nature, history, civilizations, and religions, Hegel going so far as to 
include in it nearly every thing good or worth having, and making it 
the basis of civil, political, and moral life. 

The relation of philosophy to Christianity is indicated very def- 
initely in the stubborn resistance it offered to the mythologies and 
idolatries that preceded and accompanied the introduction of Christian- 
ity, thus preparing the way for the assertion of some of the great- 
est truths of a true religion. ■ In this preliminary work of demolition 
it had no intended reference to Christianity, nor perhaps to the estab- 
lishment of a different or better religion than any that prevailed ; its 
work was philosophical, and its effect on the popular religions was 
incidental. Nevertheless, the process of undermining was as effectual 
as if it had been instituted for no other purpose, and in Greece the 
old Homeric and Hesiodic theologies declined, while in Rome Cicero 
was made to laugh at the augurs, and statesmen winked at one 
another when the gods were worshiped. In far-off Persia, Zoroaster, 
climbing to the heights of a monotheistic conception through philo- 
sophic visions, dealt sturdy blows against idolatry, and left on record 
a very satisfactory testimony to the power of religion based on philo- 
sophic instead of revealed truth. 

It may be stated, as a fact, that the philosophers were first to 
break with national religions as they were the first to see their 
absurdities ; then followed the poets, the historians, the common 
skeptics, and, at last, the people. The poetic spirit was too sympa- 
thetic with religious impulses to inaugurate preliminary assaults upon 
old faiths ; indeed, the poets were the founders of fabled religions, as 
the philosophers were their destroyers. Historians could only record 
the initiatory work of the poets, and the iconoclasm of the phi- 
losophers. By these back-handed strokes — strokes in the dark, for 
with the overthrow of the prevailing religions there was no less a 
need of a right religion, which philosophy was unable to provide — re- 
sulting in the extinction of public faith in mythology, idolatry, super- 
stition, and ignorance, the service of philosophy was incalculable. 

One of the accusations against Socrates was that he did not believe 
in the gods, and that in disseminating his infidelity, he was corrupt- 
ing the youth of Athens. Theodorus, the disciple of Aristippus, 
ridiculed the idea of the existence of gods, and abandoned nearly 
every teaching of mythology. Plato proclaimed the existence of one 
Supreme Being, doing for the Grecians what Zoroaster did for the 
Persians, and Moses for the Jews, though under less religious convic- 
tion and with less spiritual illumination than either. Seneca likewise 
espoused the idea of one God, bridging the distance from paganism to 
Christianity, and preparing the way for a Pauline demonstration of 



330 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the highest truth in theology. In this preparatory work of laying 
monotheistic foundations neither Gautama, the exponent of Hindu 
philosophy, nor Lao-tzu, the representative of Chinese philosophy, 
seemed to share, for neither had conceptions of a personal God ; but 
Greece, Rome, Persia, Palestine, Assyria, and Egypt, in their phi- 
losophers, swung from idolatrous notions toward faith in one God, the 
Creator of all things and Preserver of all men. Crude and indistinct 
was this philosophic faith, consisting at first only in a denial of the 
gods, but later in an affirmation of a personal Ruler, and so striking 
a fatal blow at polytheism, and co-ordinate religious teachings. The 
accomplishment of the ruin of the pre-Christian mythologies was 
largely due to the infidelity of philosophies, which, differing from one 
another in other things, joined hands in an assault upon the poly- 
theism of the nations, awakening them to a sense of unity in the 
Supreme Power, or at the least preparing them for its inculcation 
and reception. 

The preparatory office of philosophy, or its actual work in pioneer- 
ing the human mind through the darkness of speculation into a state 
of receptivity for religious truth, may be inferred from the fact that 
nearly all the founders of religions have been philosophers ; that is, 
that religion, true or false, has a philosophical basis, resting primarily 
on the reason, and secondarily on revelation. The exception to. this 
statement is Christianity, which is primarily the religion of revelation, 
and, secondarily, the religion of the reason. The philosophic spirit 
is an inquiring and reflecting spirit ; it refuses to accept any thing on 
authority ; it demands evidence instead of assumption ; it requires 
reason instead of faith. Hence, it often doubts when another spirit 
believes. It is not to be denied that the old philosophic doubt of 
the old religions was a step in advance, and that philosophic inquiry 
led to the abandonment of errors, both scientific and religious. That 
Arcesilaus of the Middle Academy doubted too much may be granted, 
for he even doubted the possibility of knowing any thing ; but even 
this infidelic, Pyrrhonic way of dealing with all truths, sacred," 
historic, and scientific, disadvantageous as it seemed to order, harmony, 
and progress, was productive of inquiry which, with the aid of other 
influences, resulted in the dethronement of the old faiths. Bacon 
was a doubter ; Descartes was a doubter. Not Pyrrhonists were these, 
but investigators of truth, and found it after much searching. 

One looking into the old religions will find certain philosophical 
forms of truth, or religious dogmas, grounded in philosophical state- 
ments. Many of the errors of the antagonized religions are these 
philosophic forms of religious dogmas. On no moral problem has phil- 
osophy expended more ingenuity than that of the existence of evil, 



FATE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 331 

but in every instance the religion that adopted a philosophic explana- 
tion was embarrassed by it, and never recovered from it. Neither 
Manes, nor Zoroaster, nor Gautama, nor Confucius, nor Epicurus, 
was able to frame a satisfactory theory of evil, but each uttered a 
little philosophy, which went forth as the dictum of the reason, to be 
afterward contradicted and overthrown by the doctrines of Revelation. 
At the head of all outside religions there have stood both priests and 
philosophers, ready to philosophize on religion, or breathe a religious 
tone into philosophy ; and the result has been neither pure philosophy 
on the one hand, nor an incorruptible religion on the other. Whether 
we consider Lao-tzu, the Chinese philosopher, or Gautama, the estab- 
lisher of Buddhism, or Zoroaster, the Persian priest, or the unknown 
composer of Bhagavad Gita, or the Norse system of theology, or the 
early Germanic religions, a philosophical spirit is prominent in all 
their teachings, and is the secret guide in all their developments. In 
one religion philosophy produces Pantheism ; in another Eclecticism ; 
in another Pyrrhonism ; in another Manicheism ; in another a 
Platonic spirit ; in another Idealism ; in another Materialism. When 
philosophy assailed the old religions, it purified or extinguished them ; 
when it incorporated itself with them, it corrupted and prepared the 
way for their overthrow, doing equally valuable work in both 
directions. 

In this quasi invasion of religion by philosophy, or the attempted 
reduction of religious truth to a philosophic form — an outgrowth of 
their relations — we discover the weakness of the one and the in- 
dependence of the other. The philosopher could not accompany the 
priest all the way from reason to revelation, nor did the priest sus- 
pect the thunder-stroke of the philosopher. They parted company so 
soon as one detected the spirit of the other, but often it was too late, 
either to save religion from a downfall, or philosophy from ridicule. 
In most cases a philosophical cry gave way to a religious song, or a 
religious dogma was lost in philosophic formula. The character and 
career of Scholasticism is a conspicuous proof of these statements. 
If, as Prof. G. S. Morris observes, it "was in some sense the balance- 
wheel of mediaeval life," still it was incompetent to purify the life or 
restore the supremacy of Christian sentiment to the age which it was 
impressing. That it toned the intellectual spirit, gave direction to 
research, held in check the rapid march of vice, and advertised the 
necessity of a public reformation, must be conceded by all who are 
familiar with the epoch of its authority. Its great weakness was not 
its method of expression, or the character of its purpose, but its in- 
herent rationalism from which it could not extricate itself. From 
Anselm, its founder, to William of Occam, who inflicted upon it a 



332 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

final death-stroke, there is a constant fluctuation of conceptions, a 
change of faiths, an unsettled conviction of truth, a philosophic spirit 
that tantalizes the religious life to death ; and reason paralyzed sur- 
renders the field to those more capable of adjusting the differences 
between the formalism and false ideas of speculation and the realities 
and mysteries of religion. Insufficient, either as a philosophy or a 
religion, it was followed by something more definite^ in both depart- 
ments of thought, not without, however, illustrating the distinctness 
of sphere of each, and teaching the lesson needed in these times as 
well as then, that wherever philosophy exalts itself into a religious 
form, or attempts to dictate the highest truth, or explain revealed 
truth by its rules and methods, a collapse of power is the result. 
Both go down in the wreck. 

Notwithstanding the usurpations of philosophy, or rather its at- 
tempted exposition of religious dogma, or the substitution of itself 
for religion, it gave expression to religious truth, especially in the 
early period of the Christian Church, in such a way as to confirm the 
revelations of religion. A sufficient example is the relation of the 
Alexandrian philosophy to Scripture truth, or the attempt, under the 
leadership of Philo, to unite Hellenism and Orientalism. Admitting 
the Bible to be true, it was subjected to an interpretation that 
reduced some of its revelations to absurdities, and exalted others 
into a refined state most satisfactory to the mystical or idealistic mind. 
As a consequence, Christianity was Platonized ; in other words, 
Biblical truth was transmuted by a philosophical exegesis into philo- 
sophical truth, losing its spiritual meaning, and raising a suspicion of 
its verity. In this transmutation, the spirit of infidelity is conspicu- 
ously absent; faith abounds, but it is under the guidance of the 
speculative reason. The weakness of mysticism, as a philosophical 
interpretation of religion, is of the nature of a false and imperfect 
interpretation, and as such it could not long endure. Whether, as 
between Alexandrian speculation or mysticism, and scholasticism, 
there is ground for preference, certain it is that the former in due 
time subsided, as did the latter. Christianity was compelled to sepa- 
rate from both, and stand in its true position as a religion from God, 
to be interpreted rather by spiritual than philosophic methods. 

A more direct relationship between philosophy and religion may 
be traced in the harmony of their teachings respecting fundamental 
religious ideas; for, as philosophy broke away from mythology" and 
idolatry, it was more inclined to substitute semi-religious suggestions 
of its own, which in many respects were corroborative of the more 
distinct truths of revelation. While the Gospels brought many truths 
into light, without which they would not be apprehended at all, it 



RELIGIOUS TRUTH ANTECEDENT. 333 

was, in a sense, to make transparent what was only obscure ; to make 
plain what already existed, and was supposed to exist, but had not 
been articulated. Harvey did not originate the circulation of the 
blood in the human system, but gave the fact a physiological expres- 
sion. No one will assert that the thought of immortality had no ex- 
istence, and that it did not cheer the race, . before the advent of the 
great Teacher ; but it is quite true to say that his presentation of it 
was of the nature and authority of demonstration ; he illuminated it, 
and changed a philosophic suspicion into an inspiring reality. In the 
philosophic uncertainties of Christ's times were the roots of many re- 
ligious truths that grew into fullness of meaning in the light of the 
Sun of righteousness. 

By this statement is not meant that Christianity is indebted to 
philosophy for germs of truth, for the highest religious truth has 
always been in the world, and preceded all philosophies. Obscured, 
corrupted, one age would lose sight of it, and another would recover 
it. It found its way into philosophy, as a stray light, through which 
it shone, and from which it may seem to have come ; but philosophy 
is indebted to religious truth — that is, the universal idea of truth, as 
imbedded in the consciousness of the race — and should not assume to 
be the fountain of truth. In a certain sense, it was the pioneer of 
positive religious ideas, the pioneer of positive religions ; but back of 
positive philosophy was the Judaic religion, which, owing to the dis- 
tribution of Jews throughout the East, took root in all countries and 
flourished among all peoples, affecting their philosophies as well as 
their religions. It is believed that Plato acquired a knowledge of 
Moses and the prophets through Egyptian priests, and it is not a dis- 
puted fact that Daniel and the Jewish captives made known the 
Jewish cosmogony, laws, and institutes, throughout the Babylonish 
Empire. While granting to philosophy a propaedeutic office, it must 
be understood that it was not without connection with antecedent re- 
ligions; like a satellite, it shone with borrowed light, and was in no 
sense original or inspired. That is a pregnant statement of Dr. B. F. 
Cocker, that "Greek philosophy was unquestionably a development 
of reason alone," a statement accepted with a qualification or two. 
If the Hebrew Scriptures were unknown to the philosophers of Greece, 
certain religious conceptions, and certain fundamental religious ideas, 
were not unknown to them. Even in the dreamy mythology of the 
poets were positive religious ideas, which were wanting in a proper 
presentation to be true. Overthrowing mythology, as they did, they 
did not overthrow fundamental religious ideas adumbrated by mythol- 
ogy, but appropriated them, as spoils from a wreck, and made them 
philosophical. Besides, the Holy Spirit brooded over the philosophic 



334 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

mind of Athens, inspiring to intellectual activity, but not to spiritual 
revelation. Admitting the pre-existence of religious ideas as fashion- 
ing forces, and the agency of the Holy Spirit as a directing and 
quickening influence in the development of Grecian philosophy, it is 
true that Reason exercised itself to its fullest extent in the solution 
of the problems committed to it, and did not wholly fail. If, there- 
fore, religion is indebted to philosophy for rescue from superstition 
and mythology, philosophy is indebted to religion for religious influence 
and the contents of the religious idea. 

We shall now briefly examine the theological elements of philos- 
ophy, in order to ascertain its relation to Christianity, or the final re- 
ligion that followed the early philosophy. The first necessary idea 
of a correct religion, whether supernatural or not, is a true conception 
of God. Without this, the superstructure must be baseless. Mono- 
theism is the radical element of a permanent or absolute religion. 
This was the basal idea of Judaism ; nor was it less a primal concep- 
tion of Christianity, although other ends engaged its contemplations. 
Twelve hundred years before Christ, the idea of one Supreme Being 
was dominant in the religion of Zoroaster, who was- as devoted in its 
promulgation among the Persians as was Mohammed, six centuries 
after Christ, in its enforcement in the countries of the Levant. It has 
been represented that Brahminism was the original religion of the 
Persians, but under some influence — the penetrating, if not universal, 
influence of the Judaic spirit — the masses revolted against it, and the 
unity of God became the leading and impulsive doctrine of the new 
religion. Under the sway of the monotheistic idea, the Persians were 
delivered from idolatry, and became worshipers of the true and 
living God. Ahuramazda was his sacred name. He differed in 
no essential attribute from the Jehovah of the Hebrews. Through 
the influence of a superstitious spirit, and unable to settle the problem 
of evil, Zoroaster compromised his monotheism by the admission of a 
dualistic principle or spirit in the nature of God, which wrought mis- 
chief in both philosophy and religion, and which prepared the way 
for the gradual decline of the Persian faith. However, the monothe- 
istic principle, pure and simple, was recovered and made triumphant 
in the later religion of the Nazarene. In Greece, the monotheistic 
idea was antagonized by a very prevalent polytheistic sentiment, 
which existed down to the time of Paul, who, seeing an altar in one 
of their temples to the "Unknown God," vindicated the theistic hy- 
pothesis, and shattered the lingering faith in the gods of Greece. 
Prof. Draper intimates that the Oriental conception of God was pri- 
marily adopted by the Platonists, or that monotheism was the accred- 
ited faith of the Platonic Christians or Mystics of Egypt. In one 



PROVIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 335 

way and another, monotheism, struggling for supremacy in Persia, 
Greece, Egypt, or elsewhere, and contending with dualism, polythe- 
ism, or Brahminism, succeeded early in planting itself in the philos- 
ophies and religions of the world. It was a great victory, and 
Christianity found the way prepared for it by these triumphs over 
the old superstitions. 

Involved in the monotheistic conception is the doctrine of the 
government of the world, and the reign of Providence in human 
affairs. According to the old legends, Zeus reigned in the heavens, 
Poseidon in the sea, and Hades in the invisible or under-world, while 
all shared in the government of the earth. This polytheistic govern- 
ment subsided so soon as polytheism itself fell under the blows of the 
rational monotheism of Judaism, philosophy, and Christianity, but the 
adjustment to the idea of unity in the divine government was as dif- 
ficult as the previous adjustment to the idea of unity in the divine 
Being. One government was as difficult to comprehend as one God ; 
but both ideas, involved in monotheism, first maintained by Judaism, 
then by other religions, then by philosophy, passed into Christianity 
as among its fundamental truths, and are now universal. 

Respecting Providence, or the reign of divine influence in human 
affairs, all religions and all philosophies have been in doubt as to its 
extent, and some have even questioned the fact of divine supervision 
at all. Cicero held that the important events in terrestrial affairs 
might receive divine attention, but that divine supervision is not 
minute or individual. The errors, crudities, sophistries, and uncer- 
tainties of the old faiths, and the skepticism or suspicious interpreta- 
tions of the old philosophies adopted in a reactionary mood of mind, 
were not without value in preparing the religious mind for the more 
comforting doctrine of Christianity, which represents that not even a 
sparrow falls without the Father, implying the most careful superin- 
tendence of human life and sympathy with it. 

Fundamental, therefore, as these double ideas of the divine unity 
and divine government are to Christianity, philosophy, by its vigorous 
protests against the errors of false religions, and by its own errors 
touching the same truths, opened the way for the transparent and 
authoritative promulgation of the truth, as it is, by Him who is the 
truth and the life. 

In the struggle for the assertion of human rights, that is, in the 
final religious estimate placed upon man, philosophy, though not 
uniform in its teachings, nor wholly consistent with the revelations 
of Christianity, played no inconsiderable part, and has aided in gen- 
erating a much-needed enthusiasm over humanity, in its rights and 
interests. Hindu philosophy, prescribing caste, asceticism, and an 



336 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

inhuman eschatology, can not be wholly condemned, for it has nour- 
ished the religious instinct, and kept it alive, even when it was per- 
verting it and stupefying it into permanent lethargy and dullness. 
Hindu eclecticism, as represented in the Bhagavad Gita, elaborates 
the caste system in an attractive form, basing its discriminations on 
a supposed existent differentiation in humanity, which is a contradic- 
tion of the doctrine of the unity of the race ; but it leads to the 
doctrine by a perverted discussion of it. In the Yoga philosophy 
man's bondage to evil is explained as the result of five causes; viz., 
ignorance, egoism, desire, aversion, and love of life; and "the means 
or accessories of Yoga," by which emancipation or restoration is 
secured, are eight; viz., restraint, obligation, posture, regulation, abstrac- 
tion, devotion, contemplation, and meditation. No one can read this philos- 
ophy without feeling that the diagnosis of man's condition is ap- 
proximately good, and that the complex remedy is beneficial. The 
analysis of the disease does not include all the symptoms ; the remedy 
is not atoning or redemptive; but both the analysis and remedy are 
suggestive, and the reign of that philosophy is a preparation for the 
truth as it is in Christianity. 

Seneca, representing the Stoical philosophy of Rome, advocated 
human rights with a fidelity and a conscientiousness not excelled by 
Christian writers. He declaimed against gladiatorial sports, savage 
customs, and cruelty of all kinds, and exalted the rights of man into 
a doctrine of political faith. He believed in the brotherhood of 
man. This was a step in the right direction, and Roman Stoicism 
may be credited with a propaedeutic office in its relation to Christianity. 

Grecian Stoicism, dimmed by the spirit of the age, but feeling its 
way along the lines of human thought, rather inclined to broad views 
of the natural rights of man, and was less friendly to systems of caste, 
slavery, and oppression, than the petrified religions of the East. In 
its larger vision of what man is, and of his rights, relations, and 
obligations, Grecian philosophy was a ray of that light that was so 
soon to dawn upon the world, and drive away the darkness that had 
enveloped it from the beginning. 

In its ethical teachings, philosophy prepared the way for the super- 
naturalistic morality of the New Testament. It taught morality from 
different motives ; its standards of right and wrong were defective ; 
its application of ethical rules to the social condition of man was 
loose and ineffectual ; and it is a question if philosophic morality was 
ever reduced to practice, or elevated human society in its practical ad- 
ministration. In spite of these deficiencies no one can read Cicero, 
Epictetus, Seneca, Socrates, and Plato, without recognizing the intense 
earnestness of these teachers in their searching for a moral base, and 



PA GAN ANTICIPA T10NS. 337 

without being convinced that they desired the moral elevation of 
their respective nations. What learned disquisitions they have 
written on patience, fortitude, benevolence, patriotism, temperance, 
the chief good, the true, the beautiful, filial love, and the parental 
relation, and the virtues and duties suggested by man's relation to 
himself, his family, his country, and God! It may be doubted that 
modern philosophy has gone beyond the ancient in the value of ethi- 
cal suggestion, or in the construction of ethical systems. Surely 
Adam Smith, in his theory of "sympathy," and Herbert Spencer, in 
his theory of altruism, and James Mill, in his abnegation of the 
moral sense, may not claim superiority to Seneca or Socrates, who 
thundered against vice with apostolic fervor and apparent inspiration. 
By virtue of the ethical spirit of philosophy, sufficient or deficient, 
humanity was prepared for the revelation of a fixed, uniform, and 
universal standard of morality. 

A glance at Assyrian philosophy, as the preparation or virtually 
the embodiment of the Assyrian religions, leads to the same conclu- 
sion. According to the discoveries of George Smith in Assyria, the 
religion of the Accads embraced such ideas as magic, gnosticism, 
sorcery, diabolism, solar influences, good and evil spirits, and many 
other curious and erroneous teachings; but they were related to the 
philosophy that then prevailed, and to the Jewish religion that followed ; 
to the one in that practically philosophy and religion agreed in teach- 
ing the same things, to the other in that they prepared the public 
mind for a religion of a higher order, with the supernatural factor in 
it. Whatever the philosophy, whether as diagnostic as Hindu Eclec- 
ticism, as discriminating as Roman Stoicism, or as superstitious as 
Assyrian Gnosticism, in every instance it has pioneered the mind to- 
ward a better condition, or prepared it for a better religion. 

As prominent as any thing in Christianity are the two doctrines 
of incarnation and atonement, the one pertaining to the birth, the 
other pertaining to the death of its founder. So radical are these 
truths that without them the proclamation of Christianity would be a 
failure. Did these doctrines have any foreshado wings in the national 
philosophies, or did Christianity appear unheralded in these respects? 
As to incarnation, Brahminism was already full of examples, and 
Judaism had predicted the birth of a son from a virgin as the world's 
Savior. But these were the anticipations of religions; w T hat, if any, 
were the anticipations of philosophy? As in Assyria, so in India, 
the popular religion w y as the popular philosophy ; w r hat was taught 
by one was assumed by the other ; the distinction between philosophy 
and religion was not clear, therefore. The doctrine of incarnation 
was a Brahminical doctrine, quite as philosophical as religious, pre- 

22 



338 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

paring the Oriental mind for one incarnation not included in their 
prophecies or expectations. Even the grotesque and fabulous stories 
of Brahminical incarnations, baseless and foolish as they were, would 
qualify the mind to consider a supernatural incarnation, or an event 
so lofty and divine that, instead of being rejected, it must be ac- 
counted for and received. The philosophical religions prepared the 
Eastern mind for the new doctrine of incarnation. 

Pure philosophy, revolting from mythology and superstition, never 
expressed itself directly on the subject; at least, no philosopher 
turned prophet, like Isaiah or Micah, and announced the advent of 
the great Teacher; but philosophers, historians, poets, and people 
lived in anticipation of the arrival of a Eevealer of truth in the 
person of a Messiah. The expectation was general, created for the 
most part by the Jewish prophecies, but also by that philosophic 
preparation, perhaps not fully recognized, that preceded it. 

As to atonement, the principle is as philosophical as it is religious, 
and the fact of atonement is as historical as the fact of death itself. 
All religions, barbarous and enlightened, have acknowledged the ne- 
cessity of suffering, both as a penalty and remedy for sin. The 
sacrificial system of Judaism was the ordained typical system of 
atonement, completed in the voluntary death of Jesus Christ. The 
religious idea of atonement by sacrifice pervaded all schools of 
thought, as it had all systems of religion, only it was clouded by su- 
perstition, and enforced without proper guards and restrictions, lead- 
ing often to inhumanity and cruelty without procuring the ends in 
view. Just before he drank the hemlock, Socrates ordered the sacri- 
fice of a fowl to iEsculapius, recognizing the duty of sacrifice, and 
that it in some way atoned for sin. 

In these particulars philosophy, crude in its conception of the 
relation of sacrifice to human redemption, and superstitious in its 
faith touching religious duties, laid the foundation for a belief, first, 
in the incarnation of the Son of God, and, second, in a sufficient 
sacrifice for sin by the death of the Great Master. Less reliance, 
however, should be placed on these foreshadowings which relate more 
particularly to Christianity than on those which relate to religion in 
general ; for, in its broadest scope, philosophic truth is a finger-board 
to the great principles, such as monotheism, human responsibility, 
and eschatology, that underlie religion, rather than an index to the 
particular tenets of Christianity. It may be added, however, that in 
proportion as it points to religion at all, it must point to Christianity, 
which embodies all the virtues and truths of the religious idea. 

Viewed in this general aspect, philosophy is the best antecedent 
perspective of eschatohgical truth that ancient literature affords. The 



MUSINGS ON IMMORTALITY. 339 

doctrine of immortality, dimly apprehended, did not go begging for 
support among the philosophers. It was questioned, analyzed, sus- 
pected, but not often, except by the materialists, rejected ; influenced 
by the superstitious spirit of the age, it was associated with errors, 
such as transmigration, but it was not pantheistic, and so was an im- 
provement on the fatal dream of the Buddhist. In fact, as between 
Grecian philosophy, with its echoing discord of announcements touch- 
ing the future life, and those Asiatic religions that fostered panthe- 
ism, transmigration, nirvana, and all such uncongenial dogmas, the 
former must be preferred. While Cato mused on immortality, Socra- 
tes, under condemnation, talked of meeting Orpheus, Homer, and 
Ajax in the other life, gleams of immortality irradiating from his 
prison couch. Did Stephen talk more confidently when stoned? 
Epicurus, a materialist of the lowest grade, advanced arguments against 
a belief in the immortality of the soul, showing the decadence or un- 
certainty of faith in the later period of the philosophical era of Greece, 
but as a whole Greek philosophy may be quoted on the side of the 
great doctrine. 

As to the abode of departed spirits, the standard by which rewards 
and retributions will be administered, and in what the rewards and 
retributions consist, philosophy theorized freely, and was more rational 
than some of the old religions. The old Homeric theology, popular 
with the masses, was not without influence in philosophic circles, but 
it was resisted as it was subjected to analysis, and in the later days 
only unconsciously recognized, if recognized at all. As the apostles 
were infected with the Judaizing spirit and carried into the new dis- 
pensation some of the features of the old economy ; as Protestant- 
ism still exhibits the impression of Roman Catholic teaching ; as 
Buddhism is not entirely free from Brahminism ; so Greek philosophy 
was not entirely emancipated from the theology or mythology of the 
poets. 

In respect to eschatological truth, it may be said in favor of the 
poetical theology, that it was far more rational and accorded better 
with Scriptural teaching than it did in its cosmology or ontology. 
Its perspective of the future was more vivid, just, and truthful than 
its historical conception of the genesis of matter and man, or its the- 
ological notion of God. Even this concession to the merits of the 
poetical theology must be understood with the qualification that it ap- 
plies only to generic principles, and not to the details of the eschato- 
logical conception. Concerning the doom of the wicked and the hap- 
piness of the righteous, this theology is outspoken, reciting at 
length the horrors of hades and the glories of the abode of the gods, 
and impressing upon the Greek mind the necessity of righteousness 



340 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

as the condition of entrance into that elysian abode. Its purpose was 
legitimate; its details of description provoked in the philosophic 
mind a doubt of the existence of such worlds. The poet located 
heaven and hell with all the confidence of knowledge, which added 
to the impressiveness of his teaching, but philosophy questioned the 
locations. 

Heaven was located above the sky; hell sometimes in the in- 
terior of the earth, sometimes not far below the surface. This is 
specific, but not more specific than the remorse that must fill the cup 
of woe of the vicious and ungrateful. A judgment-seat, judges, de- 
grees of suffering, degrees of reward, were revealed by Homer as if 
he were inspired; and to these general principles of immortality, 
judgment, rewards, and punishments, no exception can be taken. 
The philosopher — Plato, in particular — rejected Homer, not because 
of the inherent absurdity of these principles, for he adopted them 
himself, but because of the superstitious excrescences that had gathered 
around them. In the statement of doctrinal principles Homer was 
clearer than the inferior poets who followed him, and who, instead 
of enforcing the principles, buried them in a mass of foolish crudi- 
ties. The poet fore-glimpsed the truth and announced it ; the philoso- 
pher stripped it of mythology; the Apostle Paul amplified it on 
Mars' Hill, revealing the doctrines of immortality, resurrection,, and 
judgment, as Athens had never received them from poets or philoso- 
phers. It was all in the same line, however; the poetical, the 
philosophical, and the apostolical, were three successive stages of revela- 
tion, the last being complete and authoritative, because divinely in- 
spired, as the others were rationally conjectured. 

Thus the old philosophy sustained an intimate relation to Chris- 
tianity. It reflected its teachings and prepared the way for the 
apostolic proclamations to such an extent that Prof. Draper says: 
"Christianity was essentially a Greek religion." This conclusion, 
plausible because of the relation, is not justified by the facts, nor is 
the conclusion of Prof. Lindsey, that Christianity is the offshoot of 
Judaism. Neither Greek philosophy nor Judaism can be ignored in 
an estimate of Christianity ; both contributed to it, the one a 
philosophic spirit, the other religious truth ; but it contains elements, 
truths, a spirit not found in either, derived from a source not com- 
mon to them. The bearings of philosophy on religion, and its mis- 
sionary work, must be prominently recognized in a just historic 
account of the introduction of Christianity ; but the special, differ- 
entiating truths of Christianity, however anticipated by the old 
religions or the old philosophies, had for their source a Messianic 
character unknown to both, the reformer of all religions and philoso- 



MISTAKES OF THE MODERN SPIRIT. 341 

phies, the Teacher of all truth, and the Savior of all who would 
believe in him. In its highest position, as in its last anal} T sis, 
Christianity stands alone, supreme, intended for no creature but man, in- 
debted to no source but God. 

In this survey the relation to Christianity of the ancient Oriental 
philosophies, more particularly the Greek and Hindu, has been con- 
sidered, but modern philosophy sustains a missionary relation that it 
may be profitable briefly to study. A visitor from Jupiter to the 
earth might be impressed with the hostility of modern science and 
philosophical research to religion in general, and to Christianity in 
particular ; but a protracted stay and a close view of what is going on 
would lead him to suspect that modern materialists are doing a great 
work for the religion they would overthrow. The Bible has been 
assailed by every scientific weapon that could be manufactured ; every 
new science has been developed into a force against it; geology, 
chemistry, psychology, biology, and physiology, have been employed 
against revealed religion, and at times with telling effect, staggering 
the faith of the elect, and creating rejoicing at the gates of hell. 
The attitude of modern philosophy, embracing the scientific spirit 
of the age, to Biblical truth, is one of opposition, but it is one of 
support also, not cordial, fraternal support, but, by virtue of its dis- 
coveries and concessions, a bulwark of defense for a truer Chris- 
tianity than was bequeathed us .by the former ages. For, while its 
questionings of certain religious announcements have led to the 
abandonment of certain fossilized interpretations, as that concerning 
the antiquity of the earth, it has also led to a verification of the 
more essential truths of Christianity, as atonement and responsibility. 

If Christian theology has erred at all, it has erred in the scope 
and magnitude of its undertakings, rather than in its hostility to 
physical research and discovery. Undertaking to settle all questions, 
scientific as well as religious, it failed, and under the papal regime 
it obstructed pure and undefiled scientific venture, paralyzing aspira- 
tion, and limiting the area of knowledge. The modern spirit, free 
from papal bondage, has entered upon an exploration of facts on its 
own account, and in its progress of discovery it has been compelled 
to differ with standard ecclesiastical systems of chronology, and with 
geologic and astronomic theology in general ; and, emboldened by its 
success, it is not surprising that it has at last assailed the spiritual 
side of Christianity. Aiming to correct the scientific notions of the- 
ology, it has gone to the other extreme of trying to overthrow its 
spiritual teachings. This is another task, however, and of quite 
different proportions, and it will fail, just as theology failed in its 
attempt to teach science. It can not monopolize all questions any 



342 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

more than theology. While philosophy, through scientific agency, is 
correcting the scientific weakness of religion, Christianity is slowly in- 
jecting religious truth into philosophy. At all events, this is the drift 
of the struggle for supremacy at the present time between the two 
forces. Certain it is, that the spiritual truths of Christianity, assailed 
in every possible way, remain unchanged and unharmed, and, indeed, 
in a sense confirmed, by philosophic investigation, so far as philosophy. 
can confirm things spiritual. 

One evident effect of the modern struggle is that the theologians 
have been aroused to a strong defense of the citadel of Christianity. 
This was necessary, on the ground of dissatisfaction with old state- 
ments of truth, and with uncertain and scientifically inconsistent in- 
terpretations of fact and doctrine. The cry of heresy, the spirit of 
loyalty, the power of the creed, and the influence of Church polity 
had held the multitudes to a uniform acceptance of all the forms of 
truth, and prevented independent inquiry and rational proof. While 
this spirit of quietness reigned there was no original searching for 
foundations, except at the peril of penalty ; but a general attack on 
the line, even querulous and acrimonious as it was, incited to calm, 
heroic, profound response from the other side. 

The final result has not been announced ; but thus far the strug- 
gle has established a difference between religion and philosophy, that 
each has its sphere, and that mutual invasions are no longer justifi- 
able. This is a gain for both, especially for religion. As in Wesley's 
time, the bad odor of the philosophy of Hume, Hobbes, and others 
drove the religionists to prayer, study, and conflict for the truth, so 
now the infectious spirit of philosophy excites to a thoughtful com- 
parison of the two systems, and the relative position of each as a fac- 
tor in the civilizing processes of mankind. Without doubt scientific 
philosophy will win laurels in the field of ideas, and discover princi- 
ples essential to and underlying human progress ; meanwhile Chris- 
tianity will demonstrate its separate and divine origin, acquiring in 
our world-life a conquering influence, and at last exercising indis- 
puted dominion over the ages. 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEA. 343 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE RELIGIOUS CONCEPT. 

M THIERS is on record as saying, " Whether true or false, 
. sublime or ridiculous, man must have a religion." The ne- 
cessity for religion, or satisfaction of the moral nature, is as impera- 
tive as the necessity for food, or the maintenance of the physical life. 
The ground-plan of religion is the religious idea, or the religious bias 
of humanity, the study of which will reveal it as one of the intense 
and differentiating peculiarities of man. 

To the statement that the religious idea is universal, or that one 
of the contents of consciousness is a religious concept, exceptions have 
been raised by Sir J. Lubbock, Prof. R. Owen, Hooker, Moffat, and 
others, who cite barbarous tribes, altogether twenty-eight in number, 
who, in addition to living without a religion, have no knowledge of 
God, and from whose minds a sense of the supernatural has entirely 
faded away. Accepting these statements as correct, an argument of 
no inconsiderable force may be raised against the common view of an 
innate recognition of God in the race, and of the integrity and force 
of the religious convictions of men. So direct an assault on an 
established theological proof of the existence of the moral sense, and 
the citation of instances against it, compelled a re-examination of the 
alleged instances, with the following favorable results, as tabulated by 
Prof. A. Winchell : As to seven tribes, the information is superficial 
and insufficient ; as to nine tribes, the information is contradicted by 
overwhelming evidence to the contrary ; as to nine other tribes, the 
religious life is nothing, but the idea of the supernatural is recognized 
as fundamental to existence ; as to three tribes — the Gran Chacos of 
South America, the Arafuras of Vorkay, and the Andamaners — the 
mind is a religious vacuum. Of the vast number of tribes, nationali- 
ties, peoples, and tongues composing the human family, three small 
tribes have been found in whom not a solitary religious idea, feeling, 
or affection seems to exist. Perhaps an exhaustive attempt at the 
discovery of the religious principle in them might be rewarded 
with success. 

The exception granted, the general statement that the religious 
concept is universal remains. Wherever man is, there is a worshiper, 
or a thinker of supernatural things. Superstition, gross, carnal, 
cruel, is an index to the existence of a religious faith, which, in its 



344 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY, 

unenlightened and perverted form, is a demonstration of its power. 
Superstition is a bad definition of religion, but it is the proof of the 
religious principle. Nothing can be made against the idea itself by 
quoting the irregularities, complexities, barbarisms, and cruelties 
which it has provoked ; on the contrary, a wrecked religion is the 
evidence of the religious principle. The natural appetite for food and 
drink may be perverted into gluttony and intemperance, but the folly 
and excess of appetite furnish as strong proof of its existence as its 
moderation and proper exercise. 

Going back as far as history will take us, and then reading the 
proceedings of the prehistoric ages in hieroglyphs, and on cuneiform 
tablets and the tombs of sages, it is easy to conclude that religion has 
been a dominant influence in all the centuries, and that all peoples 
have subscribed to certain forms of worship, and paid homage to the 
deities understood by them. The universality of religion is proof of 
the universality of the religious idea, and, according to a canon of philos- 
ophy, whatever is universal is native to man. A universal conscience 
proves that it is natural to man, just as universal speech proclaims it 
as a characteristic of man. The religious idea may be assigned to the 
category of universal ideas, the exception noted having no more value 
than idiocy, if quoted against man as an intellectual being, or dumb- 
ness, if quoted against language as his characteristic. 

Putting it on a level with other universal ideas, it must be as 
authoritative as others, and entitled to the development and satisfac- 
tion which its nature solicits and requires. But, at the risk of seem- 
ing to exaggerate its significance, we go a step farther, and affirm 
that it is more authoritative than any other, and should be developed 
and satisfied, though all others suffer hunger, dwarf, and die. 
Back, beneath, over all instincts, intuitions, natural and rational 
principles, is the religious concept strongest, the most vital, the only 
eternal, principle in man. The greatest idea in man, it is the most 
liable to perversion, and is, therefore, the greatest source of danger, 
as well as the greatest source of development. Perverted, man is a 
wreck ; developed, man is a sovereign. Other universal ideas operate 
in a well-defined, limited sphere, but this idea ranges through all the 
spheres of human thought, and expands by contact with the greater 
thoughts of God. Moreover, in the developed or undeveloped man 
other universal ideas are subordinated to the religious idea, which is 
always supreme, unless smothered, starved, paralyzed. The religious 
idea speaks, and appetite is restrained, the thought of responsibility 
is awakened, a rule of right is sought, the conscience is courageous in 
its impelling power, the judgment is clear in its discriminating decis- 
ions, and the soul bows in prayer before its Maker. Other ideas 



PRODUCING CAPACITY OF THE IDEA. 345 

may suggest moral duties, or moral obligations may arise from au ob- 
servation of the relationships of men, and a sense of right may seem to 
originate in the midst of social conflicts; but the religious idea is su- 
preme in its germinating, discriminating, and impelling power, and 
commands the whole life. 

The producing capacity, or the spontaneous growth of the religious 
concept, is marvelous, indicating a high mission, and establishing the 
claim of its superiority. It is crowding the world with religious in- 
stitutions; it builds altars and temples; without a knowledge of 
the true God, it will make gods for itself; without the true Bible, 
it writes religious documents of its own ; without true prophets, it 
raises up those professing to be the inspired servants of the Most 
High ; without the Cross, it induces sacrifices for sin ; and in its lowest 
form it fails not to impress itself on the customs, laws, beliefs, and 
moral life of a people. The religious idea is the source of the relig- 
ious ideas of the many religions to which history points, and which 
still exist. Brahminism is a religion of ideas traceable to the re- 
ligious idea. Buddhism is a religion of ideas ; Taoism, Parseeism, 
and Shintoism are religious ideas, born of the idea. In these we see 
a perverted development of the idea, which, however, is not extin- 
guished in the development, but exists as the controlling influence, 
waiting for right development in the order of time. The religious 
norm is Christianity, to which the old religions will finally accommo- 
date themselves, and religious ideas will yield to the exactions of the 
true religious idea. 

This concept is not on the way to extinction. Eeligious ideas, 
expressing themselves in the tortured types of paganism, may wither 
and expire, but the idea is imperishable. Strauss asks, "Have we 
still a religion?" The more important question is, Have we the re- 
ligious ideal Given the Idea, and Religion follows. The idea is not 
a latent force ; it never was, it never can be, inactive; it must always 
be producing. It may be misdirected ; it may be at variance with 
modern thought; but it is on hand everywhere and at all times, pro- 
ducing religions, and ready for the right religion. Other ideas, 
active, growing, intelligent, conserving, are yet neither so omnipotent 
nor prolific. The love of order, liberty, and fraternity, the instinct 
of patriotism, breaks out in various forms of government; the spirit 
of sympathy rears philanthropic institutions ; but Churches, Bibles, 
priesthoods, prayers, sacrifices, songs, faiths, stand forth as the pecu- 
liar witnesses to the power of an idea dominant throughout the ages. 

If, therefore, the religious concept is universal, authoritative, and 
productive, it is entitled to a consideration which no other idea may 
invoke. Rising above others, like Mont Blanc above surrounding 



346 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

peaks and ranges, to its height we propose to go, and from its summit 
survey the inalienable characteristics of the idea, and its relation to 
manhood, civilization, and destiny. Not a little difficult is the task, 
however, first to take the idea out of its relations, to isolate and ex- 
amine it and describe it, and then portray its relations, with their 
significance and value. This must be done, if the idea itself receive 
a just philosophic treatment. The universality of the religious con- 
cept has been affirmed. No account of the fact, no history of the 
origin of the fact, was given. The only explanation of the statement 
is, that the religious idea is constitutional, an inalienable characteristic 
of man. It belongs to him alone. Animals are not equipped with 
it. It is his glory, and is the key to his possibilities. It is the 
measure of his strength and the index to his immortality. It opens 
up the supernatural to his vision, and clothes him with supernatural 
power. The constitutional idea links him with the constitution of 
all things, by virtue of which he sustains a pantheistic relation to 
the universe and God. Under the direction of the idea, he has his 
hands on every thing, and his eyes continually open upon the unseen. 
That its objective point is God, no one will deny; that it postulates 
immortality, all must admit; that it echoes the thought of personal 
responsibility, all by experience know ; that it enjoins prayer, faith, 
sacrifice, humility, honesty, history attests, and individual life fully 
corroborates. The religious idea, swinging out into eternity, brings 
back eternal things to the soul. This is its purpose, or it is purpose- 
less. The establishment of relations between man and God is the 
end of its administration, its only function. The religious idea is, 
therefore, not only the basis of religion, but also the root-idea of hu- 
manity, the key to character, the source of possibility. To know man 
adequately, more than his religion must be known ; his religious nat- 
ure, or the religious roots of character, must be analyzed and under- 
stood. Back of religion is the idea that produced it, as back of the 
steamship are Watt and Fulton. 

Auguste Comte, a positivist, examining the historic growth of the 
race, propounded, as its explanation, the "law of the three stages," 
through which, according to his judgment, it had passed. The first 
stage is theological; the second, metaphysical; the third, positive or sci- 
entific. While he hoped to demonstrate that the intellectual growth 
of the race, beginning with theological conceptions, is toward a posi- 
tive or scientific affirmation of truth, and ultimately away from the 
religious, it is singular that he concedes the theological spirit to be the 
earliest historic human force, the foundation of the first social, polit- 
ical, and moral institutions in the world. History compels this 
acknowledgment, for it is a fact that the idea of the supernatural 



ORIGIN OF RELIGIONS. 347 

appeared among the earliest manifestations of human activity. Comte 
interprets it as a superstitious or fictitious idea, the outgrowth of 
ignorance and fear ; but its existence he frankly acknowledges. As to 
his interpretation, it does not concern us ; for even fear could not ex- 
cite it if it did not exist, and ignorance of the supernatural would not 
likely lead to it if there was nothing in the nature of man to correspond 
to it. The theologic spirit is primary, antecedent, and constitutional. 

Strauss discusses his question, "Have we still a religion?" for the 
purpose of annihilating the religious instinct, and proceeds to ex- 
plain the rise of religions, or the reign of the supernatural idea 
among men, by attributing both the idea and its expression to natural 
causes. He quotes Hume to the effect that man adopted religion, 
not from a " disinterested desire of knowledge and truth," but because 
he fancied it might aid him in his material conflicts, or from a spirit 
of selfishness. This falls short of the truth. Oppressed by a sense 
of want and helplessness, man was driven by his religious nature out 
of himself to form an alliance with the Supreme Power, that he 
might conquer in conflict and reign as a sovereign. It was a sense 
of need that drove man to God ; but the sense of need is the religious 
sense awakened or in power, and the impulse to seek God is the 
prompting of the active religious idea. The thought of self-interest 
thrives in the presence of the religious idea ; it is legitimate ; it is 
the thought of deliverance, development, eternal happiness. 

Strauss, looking at the early religions, sees in them the play of 
ignorance and the sway of a supernatural fear of nature. Polytheism 
was not an unnatural type of religious faith. In the intellectual 
progress of man, and as his acquaintance with nature increased, the 
polytheistic sentiment weakened; and, as he reflected on the unity 
of the Avorld, as he did in Greece, or, as he claimed the attentions 
of a personal Ruler, as did the Jews, the drift of thought, both phil- 
osophical and religious, was toward the "serried form" of monothe- 
ism. Polytheism is the religion of ignorance; monotheism is the 
religion of reflection; but it is "only an ancient Christian-Hebrew 
prejudice to consider monotheism the higher form of religion." It is 
evident that Strauss means that, if one religion is superior to another, 
of which he is not certain, all religions are the products of human 
fears, or human reason, and barren of divine elements, and, therefore, 
without any authority. 

The supernatural character of religion is not now in question ; 
but, if Strauss is correct in his analysis of religions, he confirms the 
position taken in this chapter, that the religious idea is constitutional. 
Polytheism and monotheism are proofs that it is an organic idea of 
human nature. 



348 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Strauss undertakes at some length to expose the anthropomorphic 
origin of the concept of a personal God and the doctrine of a future 
life, two fundamental conceptions of any religion ; and, having satis- 
fied himself that these doctrines are the result of philosophic specula- 
tion, religious hopes, and rational fears, he concludes that the world 
is without a divine religion. To contest this conclusion is not now our 
purpose. The alleged discovery of an anthropomorphic origin or 
center of great religious doctrines, is substantial proof of the constitu- 
tionality of the religious idea. It is in man to think supernatural 
things, and to project supernatural conceptions. We do not say 
supernatural truths, for the religious idea needs enlightenment ; with- 
out enlightenment, it runs into superstition ; but, enlightened or 
not, it exhibits in its highest activity a supernatural animation, and 
issues religions, superstitious or otherwise. 

That this concept is constitutional, is more a question of fact than 
speculation. To testimony we appeal. Of South African tribes, 
ignorant, debased, vicious, Dr. Livingstone says: "There is no ne- 
cessity for beginning to tell even the most degraded of these people 
of the existence of a God or a future state — the facts being uni- 
versally admitted." Mungo Park represents the Mandingo Africans 
as in possession of the same beliefs. Says Adolf Pictet : ' f If there 
ever had been, or if there still anywhere existed, a people entirely 
destitute of religion, it would be in consequence of an exceptional 
downfall, which would be tantamount to a lapse into animality." Sir 
John Ross reports the sense of a personal God in the Arctic High- 
landers. Dr. McCosh says: "The idea of God, the belief in God, 
may be justly represented as native to man." Hitter holds that the 
idea of God is original to the mind. Herbert Spencer says: "Re- 
ligious ideas of one kind or another are almost, if not quite, universal." 

Darwin asserts the existence of " numerous races who have no 
idea of one or more gods and who have no words in their language 
to express them." Sir John Lubbock says, "It has been asserted, 
over and over again, that there is no race so degraded as to be 
entirely without a religion — without some idea of a deity. So far 
from this being true, the very reverse is the case." Both Darwin and 
Lubbock have been disputed, and the instances they report have, 
upon further examination, been turned against them. Dr. W. B. 
Carpenter declares that the attempts made by some travelers to prove 
that some nations are destitute of the religious principle have been 
" based upon a limited acquaintance with their habits of thought and 
with their outward observances ;" and Herder asserts that " traces of 
religion, however different its garb may be, are found even among 
the poorest and rudest nations on the verge of the earth." The 



A FRAME-WORK OF CO-ORDINATE IDEAS. 349 

weight of authority is against the disputants ; the cases cited by them 
have been overthrown ; and the conclusion that the religious idea is con- 
stitutional is buttressed by historical, scientific, ethnological, theo- 
logical, and philosophical proofs not easily demolished or answered. 

Dissection of the constitutional religious idea will disclose a frame- 
work of co-ordinate facts, principles, and ideas that will aid mate- 
rially in our comprehension of man's religious nature. What, then, 
does the religious idea include ? What does it exclude ? In sum: 
marizing man's natural equipment, we must remember all that be- 
longs to it. There are, besides the religious idea, the exponent of 
religion, an intellectual idea, synonymous with the intellectual nature, 
and an emotional idea, synonymous with the emotional nature. 
Does the religious concept include or exclude the intellectual and 
emotional ? To claim that it excludes them is to leave it to itself, 
with independent functions capable of producing religion without 
them ; to insist that it includes them is to reduce them to subsidiary 
elements in the human constitution. The religious idea is great, so 
overshadowing all other constitutional forces that no injustice is clone 
in including them within its own territory and within the sphere of 
its operations. Human nature, like Ezekiel's wheels, is a combina- 
tion of ideas, one included in another, and each sufficiently different 
in peculiarities to be easily identified. Intellectual activity is presup- 
posed in moral activity. One without the other is impossible. Moral 
distinctions, moral issues, moral acts require the intervention of intel- 
lectual discrimination and intellectual purpose. 

The Will is the central faculty, the sign of personality, and is in- 
volved in every moral act of man. The power of self-determination 
is a constitutional power ; a volitional exercise is a constitutional ex- 
ercise ; and responsibility can be predicated only on the possession 
and exercise of a will free, independent, and conscious. Under the 
direction of such a Will the mind thinks, plans, decides, acts. 
Primarily, it may be spoken of as an intellectual faculty, but such is 
its relation to moral character that it may be elevated to the rank of 
a moral faculty. Its chief function is moral, not intellectual. The 
decisions of the Will are in most cases the decisions of the moral 
nature. It must, therefore, be included in the religious idea. 

The Judgment the psychologist will mark an intellectual faculty, 
yet it deals with moral questions, determines moral choices, and ex- 
ercises all the functions of a moral faculty. It belongs to the re- 
ligious idea. 

The Imagination may play in the aesthetic realm, or roam over 
the fields of thought, but it takes the moral nature with it, and im- 
presses it, either elevating or contaminating it. 



350 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

The Memory, crowded with evil impressions, may reproduce them 
to the consternation of the moral principle and assail it with the 
sharp edge of unholy remembrances. 

It is not asserted that every intellectual faculty is a religious 
faculty, or religion -inspiring, but it is asserted that every intellectual 
faculty is closely related to the religious constitution of man, and in its 
exercise is tributary to moral character. The religious idea is not 
without intellectual foundations ; the religious constitution is in a 
sense the intellectual constitution ; a religious act is an intellectual 
act ; religion is the human mind in worship. 

In like manner it may be established that the religious concept has 
emotional foundations, or sustains a direct relation to the emotional 
structure and the active life of man. By emotional structure we mean 
the affections, appetites, passions, the whole range of human feeling as 
by the intellectual structure we mean the whole range of human 
thinking. Both in their highest and lowest activity, the affections 
take a moral complexion and the result of their exercise is always 
apparent in the moral nature. In proportion as the affectional 
nature inclines to worthy objects the moral nature is strengthened ; 
as it lingers in the vicinity of base objects the moral nature is 
weakened and contaminated. Love of truth, and preference for 
error, are affectional as well as intellectual exercises. Love of the 
beautiful, love of order, proportion, harmony, unity, and aversion for 
their contraries are more nearly exclusive affectional acts, while love 
of the pleasures of appetite is a purely affectional exercise. The 
malevolent affections, such as jealousy, revenge, envy, hatred, as well 
as the benevolent, such as sympathy, the forgiving spirit, humility, 
and benevolence, are strictly affectional and religious. 

In whatever direction the affectional nature goes, or to whatever 
objects it attaches itself, whether intellectual, aesthetic, social, pas- 
sional, or moral, it affects the religious principle and produces re- 
ligious results. More even than the volitional, the affectional 
nature is an adjunct of the religious idea, since its activities 
spring directly from the moral character or result in molding and 
transforming it. 

The religious concept is grounded in feeling as well as thinking, 
in affection as well as reflection. Its emotional character philosophers 
concede, but are wont to deny its intellectual character. Religion is 
an emotional, not an intellectual condition ; it is a fluctuating, super- 
ficial thing, like the emotions themselves. It is a mistake to regard 
religion as an exclusive emotional or affectional state ; and it is equally 
erroneous to suspect that it is unsound or unsafe because of the pres- 
ence of the emotional element. The appetites and passions swing 



EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 351 

back and forth, or rise and fall, while the affectional nature remains 
the same in spite of the variety and fluctuation of its manifestations. 
The benevolent affections often change with objects and conditions, 
but the benevolent nature abides in its intensity and integrity. So 
the emotional or affectional element of religion, varying in intensity, 
and expressing itself in superstitious or refined ritualisms, exists always 
and in all men. Lake Erie, with all its storms, its shallows, and its 
deeps, is Lake Erie still. The emotional foundation of religion is not 
its weakness, but its strength. 

The claim that the religious concept rests on religious foundations, 
or is the outgrowth of certain religious elements in human nature, 
as distinguished from the intellectual and emotional, is consistent in 
itself, and requires special recognition. The religious in man is the 
foundation of the religion of man. That great moral faculty, commonly 
denominated conscience, speaks for the religions principle as nothing 
else in human nature. It is, in a sense, the religious principle, for 
without it religion is impossible. 

The origin of conscience baffles the evolutionist, who can not ex- 
plain it by the theory of development. Conscience per se is a struc- 
tural principle, an original and necessary moral function of man. 
Without conscience he is not man. The pagan, the savage, the 
Hottentot, exhibits proofs of its existence, in whom, however, it is 
found in an imperfect and undeveloped state, requiring enlighten- 
ment, education, training before it will act in harmony with an in- 
fallible standard of righteousness. The function of conscience is re- 
ligious, but it will not create a religion absolutely right ; it does not 
originate the ideas of right and wrong, but enforces them as soon as 
taught or discovered. The religion of conscience may be the religion 
of superstition ; but in such an event the conscience needs enlighten- 
ment. It supports religious ideas; it supports religions; it is re- 
ligious in its impulses, promptings, and enforcements. In its unde- 
veloped state, however, it will turn to one religion as quickly as to 
another; hence, the need of education. 

To affirm that the religious notion is intuitional is nearly the 
same thing as to affirm that it is constitutional ; but the thought is 
reproduced here briefly to note the strength of the intuitional idea in 
its relation to religion. Prof. Bowne designates innate ideas as the 
"raw rudiments of consciousness," or undeveloped but original con- 
cepts in human history. This quite agrees with our thought that the 
native religious elements in man are undeveloped, whether we mean 
by "religious elements" the intellectual, emotional, or the purely in- 
tuitional, or the contents of consciousness, or the authority of con- 
science, It amounts to this, that the religious concept, fundamental, 



352 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

universal, intuitional, is in a "raw" state, and requires enlightened 
development to perform the specific functions assigned it. 

One has only to examine the religious intuitions, or trace the his- 
tory of their development, or the development of religious ideas, to 
be satisfied that in their original, primitive condition, they are unde- 
veloped, but prophetic of final authority. The faith-principle is 
intuitional, which, in its original state, will attach itself to superstition 
as readily as to supernatural truth. Under guardianship and training 
it may become a heroic characteristic, as in Abraham and Paul. 
The sense of responsibility to a Supreme Power is intuitional, but is 
in a "raw" state in the undeveloped man. He is oppressed with 
the thought that he will be called to an account, and he trembles in 
view of the future ; hence, he is ready for a religion that either quiets 
that sense of responsibility, or shows how one can prepare to meet 
all the demands against him both now and hereafter. To refer this 
sense of responsibility to religious education will not do, for it precedes 
religious teaching, and leads to it. It is in man to believe ; it is in 
man to fear the higher powers ; it is in man to acknowledge respon- 
sibility ; it is in man to suspect that he will live after death. Immor- 
tality is an intuitional suggestion ; all religions are full of it, but they 
have perverted it. It is in man to suspect the existence of one Su- 
preme Being. Human nature is theistic in its intuitional outgoings, 
but in the undeveloped condition they may embrace polytheism or 
pantheism ; theism is the sign of trained intuitions. 

The ideas of faith, responsibility, duty, sacrifice, prayer, immor- 
tality, and God, are the output of the religious idea ; they are proofs 
of its existence. With or without revelation, the religious nature 
will run to these things ; without revelation the ideas will appear ec- 
centric and irregular, and religions will be superstitions; with revela- 
tion, Christianity will supplant every superstition. 

Superstition is a perversion of the religious concept ; Christianity 
secures its proper development and fulfillment. Incidentally it may 
be observed that Christianity itself is a development of religious 
ideas, as the monotheistic and Messianic ideas are suggested and re- 
vealed in the Old Testament, but brought out in their vivid relations 
more clearly in the New Testament. If Christianity, or the religion 
of divine ideas, is a development, it is not strange that the religious 
concept should itself be subject to a like process ; and this we find to 
be the fact. Both the religious idea, and the religion that satisfies it, 
have been under a law of development in their unfoldings and en- 
largements. Imperfect in the beginning, they have developed into 
perfect conditions, the one as an intuitional conviction, the other as 
a sj^stem of truth. 



LIMITATIONS OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEA. 353 

An analysis of the religious idea shows it to be, first, universal 
and authoritative ; second, intellectual ; third, emotional ; fourth, re- 
ligious; fifth, intuitional; sixth, imperfect, "raw," undeveloped. 

We proceed to notice the value of the religious concept, or its 
power to produce a true religion. Distinguishing between the idea 
and its products, we now pass from one to the other, discussing the 
product abstractly rather than concretely. If the ground-work of a 
true religion is not in man, then it must be external to him, or he 
must abide in darkness and death. It is conceded that the religious 
idea will evolve into religion ; but will it evolve into a right religion ? 
In the study of this question, foreshadowed by previous paragraphs, 
we must not forget the Artesian principle, which allows water to rise 
no higher than its source. Keligion will not exceed in value or char- 
acter the source from which it springs. Within the limitations of 
the religious idea will be found the essentials of a religion ; the re- 
ligious product of that idea will consist of rational principles, intu- 
itional suggestions, theistic and eschatological ideas, all of them 
valuable, all essential. 

For the most part, all the old religions partake of these ideas, 
and have prepared the way for a religion truer than themselves. In 
addition to the theistic idea, coupled with eschatological considera- 
tions, many of them have inculcated some of the virtues that belong 
to the better religion, and all of them profess to be supported by a 
philosophic foundation. Theories of creation, both of man and the 
universe ; hospitality, benevolence, honesty, virtue, truth ; responsi- 
bility to the Supreme Ruler, and the doctrine of future rewards and 
punishments, find a place in Brahminism, Buddhism, Mohammedan- 
ism, Shintoism, and all the religions of the pagan world. Even of 
deism, pantheism, naturalism, the same observation is true in a quali- 
fied sense. Responsibility, virtue, immortality, echo from the temples 
of such religions. The test-question is, are these the best the religious 
idea can produce? Without revelation, the religious idea, acting 
alone, has evolved into these various types of religion ; and, as speci- 
mens of its power or tendency, they are valuable. Evidently, the 
religious idea has done its best in these religions. It has had time, 
opportunity, favoring conditions to do better ; the necessity for a 
better, that is, a right religion, began with man's religious decline. 
But the religious idea, weak, though fundamental, imperfect, though 
universal, has at no time produced a right religion; never has it 
satisfied the religious demand of the world. Neither the intuitions, 
nor emotions, nor intellectual faculties, nor the absolutely religious 
instincts combined, have suggested an adequate religion ; they have 
demanded it, but could not produce it. We have written of the 

23 



354 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

break-down of philosophy; we now write of the break-down of the 
religious idea. Man is not a successful religion-maker. Even the 
philosophic Kant grovels on a low level of religion when he says 
that its chief purpose is to sanction moral duties. Philosophy has no 
right idea of it. A religion not of man is the world's necessity ; a 
religion from man's Maker is the imperative need; a religion of 
revelation, and not of discovery or human invention, is the cry of 
the hour. 

In this extremity, Christianity may be presented as a religion 
adapted to the religious nature of man ; a religion, though not the 
product of the religious idea, great enough, flexible enough to meet 
the demands of that idea. In a general sense, it may be said that 
Christianity, properly studied and lovingly received, stimulates the 
religious nature to growth and development far beyond what it would 
attain by self-motion or self-activity. The religious nature, vital and 
eternal, is susceptible of eternal development. What shall touch it, 
uncoil it, and send it out into the eternal realm? Its tendency to 
self-development is often arrested by obstacles seemingly superior to 
it ; its area of growth is seemingly within the horizon of one's natural 
view; and it often grows into deformed shapes, and with limited re- 
sources at its command. For a proper and healthy stimulus it must 
look to an outside source. Christianity is a stimulating religion. 
As the sun pours its light and heat into the vegetable world, giving 
life, form, and beauty to it, so Christianity enlightens, warms, and 
develops the religious nature into life, activity, and moral beauty. 
It stimulates the whole being by its truths, adaptations, provisions, 
promises, supports. It is the source of religious revivals, which result 
in the opening of the religious nature, or the restoration of moral life 
to man. Other religions are wanting in this power. Mohammed en- 
forced his religion, not by its inlierent stimulating property, but by the 
sword, or the law of force. Other religions depend on external aids — 
Christianity depends upon its inherent vitalizing spirit. 

Other religions, developing what they find in man, bring nothing 
new to man ; Christianity adds to man's religious resources and inspi- 
rations. It is a stimulus to activity ; it is an addition to his posses- 1 
sions. The contents of the religious concept in its natural state do 
not include all religious ideas ; there is much beyond it. Messiah- 
ship, atonement, reconciliation, resurrection, judgment, justice, and 
mercy ; a Savior, a divine Friend — the religious concept is barren of 
these notions. These notions Christianity brings to men, and presents 
them as necessary truths, the basis of a religious life, and as they are 
accepted other religions perish. 

Nor is this the total of the contributions of Christianity to the 



THE SUPREME RELIGION. 355 

religious nature. It makes clear to the consciousness what was accepted 
before with some uncertainty, or was liable to perversion. Natural 
as is the theistic notion, other religions perverted it; it could not 
take care of itself ; it needed something ; Christianity purified it, or- 
ganized it into a fact of belief, revealed God, and settled the ques- 
tion. As to a future life, other religions have assumed it, but loaded 
the belief with superstitions dark, repulsive, painful, false. A ray 
of light shines from the upper world through Christian revelation, 
and man is satisfied. 

In bringing to men truths they do not have, revealing God as 
they have not known him, revealing the future as it has not been 
discerned, and revealing redemption as it was only foreshadowed, but 
never defined, Christianity may claim to be a new religion. More, 
it may insist that it is a religion from God. In addressing man at 
all, it may claim his attention ; in invigorating his nature, it is enti- 
tled to his gratitude ; in adapting itself to his condition, it should be 
embraced by him without delay ; in saving his soul, it deserves his 
consecration, and the service of his life. 

Christianity is the supreme religion. Its origin, its truths, its 
philosophy, its ethical system, its claims, its progress, its power, must 
be considered in detail if its real character be understood. What 
Christianity is, what it proposes to do, what are its relations to other 
religions, and how it conserves human interests, it will be pleasant to 
attempt to ascertain. Its history is marvelous, a splendid record of 
contests with the dragon ; it knows what fire is ; it has met death, 
hell, and the grave. Its influence is ever widening ; millions believe 
in it as the power of God unto salvation ; millions would die for it in 
opposition to paganism and materialism. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE APOSTLE PAUL. 



IN his lecture on " Numbers," that noted English thinker, Mr. 
Matthew Arnold advances the theory that the multitudes are cor- 
rupt, selfish, and ignorant, and that the hope of the world's progress 
and regeneration is in the genius, the leadership, the providential 
work of the " few," or the " remnant," to use the expressive word of 
the Scriptures. Plato himself discovered this fact, but Christ an- 
nounced it in laconic form when he said, "Many are called, 
but few chosen." To the few, chosen of God, chosen by reason 



356 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

of natural fitness, chosen because they would perform the divine 
tasks, the world is indebted for inventions, discoveries, governments, 
philanthropies, reformations, moralities, inspirations, and religions. 
The one " chases," controls, instructs a thousand; the one is on the 
throne, the many are subjects; the one foresees, the multitudes 
follow ; the one orders, the others obey ; the one inspires, the major- 
ity keep step to his music. 

Paul takes his place among the ' ' few," ranking with them in no- 
bility of character, persistency of purpose, severity of method, and 
range of achievement. He is not of the " many," either scaled by 
his aspirations or weighed in the balances of the divine ideals. 
From the "many" he stands apart, rising higher, as Mount Tabor 
rises above the plains. He is one, not two; he is not lost in the 
multitude. 

The opinion of Chrysostom that Paul is little understood and im- 
perfectly known in the Christian world is proof of the general indif- 
ference which usually obtains among the multitudes respecting the 
greatness of their heroes and the value of their labors and achieve- 
ments. Out of this obscurity Paul is sure to come, for, next to the 
Son of Man, he is the world's greatest religious teacher, if not the 
world's greatest moral hero, and history will gradually recognize his 
relations to all religious movements, and necessarily to the world's 
civilization. As no other man, he is the representative of Christ's 
truths; as Plato stands for Philosophy, so Paul may properly stand 
for Christianity. So many-sided was he in character, so versatile in 
endowments, so wise in the selection of methods, so energetic in the 
execution of plans and purposes, so forcible a teacher of truth, and 
such an example of the system itself, that as an exponent of religion 
he eclipsed his brethren of the apostolic college, and has inspired the 
Church of the ages by his example of heroism and devotion to the 
mission of the Master. To know this representative as he actually 
lived, toiled, and died; to understand his original relations to the old 
faith and his adopted relations to the new system of truth; to trace 
his career through its vicissitudes of labor and suffering ; to observe 
his environments, what effect they had on him, and what impression 
he made on them ; to study his adaptations to the different spheres in 
which he is found, his skill in meeting emergencies, his courage in 
the presence of danger, and his patience and calmness in trial and 
darkness ; to comprehend the designs of his life, the great religious 
plans committed to his keeping, and the faith that stimulated him 
while working them into historic results ; to reveal his personal expe- 
riences of salvation, and the ground of his Christian life — are matters 
of no little importance, and deserve our most careful consideration. 



BIR TH-PLA CE OF PA UL. 357 

Over the question of his birthplace it is needless to indulge in 
speculation ; for while Jerome reports that he was born at Giscala, 
there is every reason to believe that this is an unfounded conjecture, 
and that Tarsus, a Roman city of Cilicia, was the place of his nativ- 
ity. The most convincing evidence of this fact is that Paul himself 
alludes to it in his defensive address from the steps of the fort- 
ress of Antonia. Owing to negligence in preserving genealogical 
records, Homer's birthplace has been in dispute for ages, no less 
than seven cities claiming the honor ; but the Jews were careful to 
record their family history, and were able to trace their ancestral 
lines back to the patriarchs. More than once, Paul prided himself as 
having descended from the tribe of Benjamin as proof of his Hebrew 
relationship, and when his life was in jeopardy he referred to his 
Roman citizenship as proof of being foreign-born, and that it entitled 
him to the protection of the Roman Government. 

In the double sense, therefore, 'he was a Jew and a Roman, a Jew 
by parentage, a Roman by birthplace ; a Jew descended from one of 
the tribes, a Roman citizen because in some way his father had ob- 
tained the rights and liberties of such citizenship, transferring them 
to his son, who never forgot them in his holy zeal for another king- 
dom, whose interests he sought to conserve. 

The city of Tarsus was one of the ancient cities of Asia Minor. 
It was situated twelve miles from the Mediterranean coast, on the 
bank of the Cydmus, its veritable site being now occupied by a Turk- 
ish town called Tersoos. An Assyrian king founded it about one 
hundred years after Solomon, from which time until long after Paul's 
day it continued to flourish as one of the important commercial cen- 
ters of the East. Cicero resided here during his governorship of the 
province. Augustus reorganized its government, and Mark Antony, 
with the approval of the Emperor, made it " free," or instituted 
"home rule" in the province; but it was long afterward before the 
people were endowed with the rights and immunities of Roman citi- 
zenship. In referring to Tarsus Paul speaks of it as " no mean city," 
implying distinction as a city of the Roman Empire, and also imply- 
ing the commercial enterprise and general public spirit of its inhabit- 
ants, the educational pursuits and privileges of young and old, the 
elegant taste and artistic zeal of its upper classes, and the prevailing 
love of progress, virtue, and truth in the mixed population of the 
Cilician capital. He meant to honor it ; he did not defame it ; he 
spoke of its bazaars, its schools, its temples, its synagogues, its palaces, 
its statues, its ships, its soldiers, and its eagles. In such a city of 
wealth, splendor, equipage, and culture he was born, and many a year 
he spent within its limits, engaged in the common occupation of tent- 



358 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

making, and quietly prepared himself for the providential career that 
he finally began and so brilliantly completed. 

According to trustworthy suppositions he was born A. D. 3, or 
at least during the first decade of the Savior's life. The one is born 
in the obscure village of Bethlehem ; the other in the splendid city 
of Tarsus. The one sleeps the first night in a manger ; the other in 
a palace ; but the manger and the palace are alike in the sight of 
the Lord. Paul is a chosen vessel to bear the treasures of grace to 
the households of kings, and distribute the gifts of salvation among 
the poor and the lowly. He is not called to make atonement for 
sin, as was Christ, but he is called to teach the truth as it is in Jesus. 
What was his preparation for the providential mission? In phys- 
ical appearance he was not prepossessing as a man, nor calculated to 
impress men that he could speak with authority, or act with courage. 
Small of stature, bald-headed, afflicted with strabismus, without a 
pleasing voice, evidently without oratorical accomplishments, he was 
not apparently fitted for the high office of the apostleship. If chosen 
at all, it must be for other than physical reasons. Paul himself 
draws no very complimentary picture of his person or his speech in 
his Epistles, and we are bound to believe that possibly irritable in 
temper, repulsive in manners, and imperious in conduct, he was, 
Plato-like, somewhat disagreeable in the exercise of authority, and 
not very congenial as a companion. After his conversion he was a 
different man, patient, obliging, attractive. Of his boyhood life there 
is no special report further than that he fished in the streams, roamed 
over the hills, practiced horseback riding on the plains, and indulged 
in the sports, festivals, and associations common to the times and to 
the city in which he lived. 

The early years of his life were spent in his native city. What 
were his educational opportunities in Tarsus? What did he learn in 
her schools, from her people, from the prevailing religion, and what 
was the measure of parental influence upon him, and what direction 
was given in those days to his future? Like Socrates, he exhibits 
no love of nature, being absorbed with higher thoughts, and anxious 
to know rather the origin of things than things themselves. He is 
not a student of nature ; he inquires not for facts, forms, phenomena ; 
he is not in the fields gathering flowers ; he hammers not the rocks, 
forcing them to tell their secrets ; he is not an observer ; he can not 
be an empiricist. All this is evident in the Jewish youth of Tar- 
sus. During the play-hour he mingles with his school-mates ; but when 
alone he meditates, not on things, but on truths. Neither plain, nor 
sea, nor sky ; neither the earth, nor the mountains, nor the stars, ar- 
rest the gaze, or capture the thought of this wretchedly built phys- 



CLASSICAL ED UCA TION OF PA UL. 359 

ical pupil of the Cilician schools. He is introspective by nature, 
quietly thoughtful from habit; he seeks subjects, not objects. 

If he did not spend years in the schools of Tarsus, it was not be- 
cause of any deficiency of scholarship in their teachers, or because of 
a limited curriculum of study, or because it was not honorable to 
graduate from any of its numerous halls of learning. The colleges of 
Tarsus were not excelled by those of Alexandria, Athens, or Rome. 
Here, then, for a brief period, the provincial Saul is a school-boy. 
Certain it is, that, after acquiring a knowledge of the alphabet, he 
seeks a knowledge of mathematics. He is a born mathematician ; his 
Epistles are mathematical truths. In these days he develops the 
logical faculty, perhaps disputing with professor and student, and 
triumphing in every intellectual contest. He studies metaphysics, 
poetry, and art, for the youth of nineteen centuries ago was lim- 
ited to mathematics, metaphysics, poetry, and art. He studied the 
Greek language, which was the language of the people, and may have 
become familiar with Greek authors, Greek systems of philosophy, 
and Greek ideas of life. This probability Canon Farrar disputes on 
the general ground that his Epistles contain no allusions to such au- 
thors or such subjects, forgetting that just as he ostracized himself 
from nature, so also he may have cut loose from Grecian influence. 
If he was sent at thirteen years of age to Jerusalem to complete 
his education, it is certain he did not master these authors or sub- 
jects before going ; but, as he spent several years in his native city 
after his graduation in Jerusalem, it is more than probable that he 
familiarized himself with Grecian and Roman literature, inasmuch as 
no other was accessible, and because a knowledge of it was necessary 
fully to prepare him to meet sophist, philosopher, or teacher in pub- 
lic discussion or private conversation. He is dialectical, like a philoso- 
pher ; he alludes to the wisdom of the Greeks; he quotes their poets, 
and on Mars' Hill confounds Stoic and Epicurean. He denounces 
science, " falsely so-called," and cautions the Colossians, lest any man 
spoil them through philosophy ; that is, by sophistical reasonings, such 
as a Gorgias might impose, with which he had become acquainted in 
Tarsus. These sufficiently indicate that Paul's philosophical educa- 
tion at Tarsus followed, if it did not precede, his religious instruction 
at Jerusalem. 

The parental influence in the Jewish family was usually exclusive 
and supreme. It decided the occupation, the marriage, and the re- 
ligion of the children. These decisions, it is true, were in harmony 
with public customs, orders, institutions, and laws; but the prepara- 
tion of a child for such decisions was a part of the home-training, 
and relieved the grown-up son of some embarrassments. In no fam- 



360 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ily, perhaps, was the governing influence more patent or more potent 
in the education of the children than in Saul's childhood home. 
Tarsus was a pagan city, tolerant of the Jewish religion because it was 
a " free " city, but enforcing pagan ideas in the schools and encourag- 
ing the superstitious worships of the times, so far as it enforced any 
worship or religion at all. From such religious influences Saul's par- 
ents were anxious to rescue their only son. There is nothing on 
record that they objected to the Greek language, or to the courses of 
study in the schools ; but the religious atmosphere of the city was 
poisonous, and the public religion repulsive to their taste and faith. 
On this ground, if on no other, they determined that their son should 
go to Jerusalem, where his edncation might be completed in a school 
equal to any in Tarsus, and his religion be uncontaminated with pagan 
teaching and example. At thirteen years of age he enters Jerusalem, 
a student excited by the glowing descriptions he had heard in his 
home of the city of God, and a devout believer in the faith of Abra- 
ham. The turning-point in his life had come, or was now passed. 
Both his education and religion are guaranteed. He is not a pagan ; 
he is a Hebrew. He is not a Greek ; he is a Jew. 

During the college life of Saul in Jerusalem it is difficult to de- 
termine which exerted the controlling influence in the development 
of his character, the educational environment or the religious spirit, 
or whether they were co-equal in power and relation. In intellectual 
endowment the young man had few superiors, and soon exhibited an 
aptness to study, a facility in acquiring knowledge, and an original 
and persevering habit of inquiry that, while astonishing his instruct- 
ors, revealed to them the man of the future. In the school of 
Gamaliel he early took the highest rank, both as a student and a 
dialectician, often engaging with Gamaliel himself in the discussion 
of the most abstruse problems, and reasoning with such penetrating 
force and sublime reverence, that it was generally believed a mighty 
advocate of Judaism was being raised up in the person of Saul. His 
was a large brain ; his intellect seemed avaricious for truth ; and, 
stimulated in its pursuit by parental teaching, by profound discussion, 
and especially by the natural bent of his genius, it is not surprising 
that he excelled the disputants of the school, and emerged as a 
young giant. In these days his logical, that is, philosophical, powers, 
acute as those of Socrates, soonest appeared, and were more promi- 
nently developed; he was usually inductive in his methods of inquiry, 
but a lurking deductive tendency finally displayed itself, and became 
the ruling principle of his mental action. Attributing to a process 
of revelation the great doctrinal truths of his Epistles, he was as 
ready to settle fundamental questions by logic as by revelation. In him- 



PREPARATION FOR THE APOSTOLATE. 361 

self he was philosophical ; as an instrument he was a revealer ; but his 
revelations are philosophical in content if not in form. 

In religious opportunities Jerusalem was in advance of Tarsus. 
The Hebrew religion was the public religion, paganism being confined 
to the public functionaries, of whom the majority were appointees of 
the Roman government. In fact, the religious condition of the two 
cities was reversed. In Tarsus paganism was the public religion, the 
Jewish faith being tolerated ; in Jerusalem, Judaism was the re- 
ligion of the people, while paganism was confined to limited official 
circles. In Tarsus a superior secular education was possible ; in 
Jerusalem a superior religious education was certain. Hence, Saul's 
religious education is assured, because he is in Jerusalem. He is 
"brought up" in Jerusalem in the faith; what is commenced in 
Tarsus is completed in the Holy City; acquiring the Greek in Tar- 
sus, he acquires the Hebrew in Jerusalem, and emerges as a scholarly 
rabbi, a defender of the Judaic religion, and hostile to the rising faith 
of the Redeemer. Paganism in Tarsus ; Judaism in Jerusalem. Be- 
hold in Saul the scholar, the rabbi, the advocate, the religionist. The 
two schools have done their work. 

Saul's real preparation for the apostolate, which is his final historic 
position, is by no means complete ; but his preparation as an apolo- 
gist for the old faith has been sufficiently indicated in these lines to 
justify a glance at his work as such apologist. Passing the prelimi- 
nary period of birth, youth, and education, therefore, he stands be- 
fore us an equipped advocate of Judaism, and almost without an 
equal. Prior to his day Jewish teachers, in defending their faith, 
were compelled to assail different forms of paganism, with the differ- 
ent instruments of their religion, for single errors must be combated 
with single or specific truths, and not with all that religion teaches. 
Idolatry must be met by monotheism ; the immorality of the Roman 
Empire must be met by the ethical laws of the Mosaic economy ; 
Sabbath desecration must be counteracted by the Sabbath law; and 
general sinfulness must be condemned on the ground of individual re- 
sponsibility to God in the last day. The idea of an attack on a single 
error by a single truth is philosophical, and the method is usually 
successful. In the time of Gamaliel, however, the defense of Juda- 
ism implied an attack on an entirely different form of religion ; more, 
it implied a conflict with a supremely new idea of religion ; it implied 
a conflict with a new religion, one not pagan in its dogmas or prac- 
tices, one not inferior to Judaism in its claims or teachings, one 
above Judaism in its tone, purposes, and agencies. Fighting with 
paganism was like cannonading pebbles ; fighting with Christianity 
was like an attempt to pull down the stars on one's head. 



362 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

It is significant that in that period of history, until Saul's appearance, 
Judaism had no logical or heroic defender, and Christianity no positive 
or dialectical assailant. Herod haughtily ridiculed the Christ, and 
Pilate ordered his execution, but these were social and civil acts, and 
not in the interest of any religion. Saul is the exponent of Jewish 
hatred, in logical form, of Christianity, and stands as its philosoph- 
ical opponent. It is noteworthy that he is usually represented as a 
persecutor of the new religion, emptying the brutal weapons of 
cruel opposition to limit, if not prevent, its threatening ascendency 
in the Jewish world, and that he is quite willing to go far and near 
to accomplish his purpose. This is the lowest aspect in which his 
early apologetic career can be viewed. It requires neither genius nor 
courage to be a persecutor; any depraved man can be such. Saul 
was more than a persecutor. He was the philosopher of Judaism. 
His opposition to Christianity was neither from depravity of nature 
nor cruelty of impulse, but on grounds religious in form, but philo- 
sophical in principle. His was the persecution of the philosopher; 
it was logic reduced to stones or kindled into fire. Educationally, 
he was fitted for just such opposition ; and, religiously, he was bound 
to the extreme of self-defense. 

Yet, scanning his career as a high-toned persecutor, it does not 
appear that he employed educational means in defense of the old or 
resistance of the new faith. He never engages in forensic discussions 
with the apostles on the differences of the two economies ; he never 
issues parchments in explanation of the two faiths; he never appar- 
ently examines that which he assails, for believing in the old it is 
impossible that the new religion can be true ; he attacks the new by 
violence, and means to stamp fc it out by personal force and legal ad- 
vantage. The ground of his persecution is philosophical ; the method 
of his persecution is physical, brutal. Any method may be employed 
to accomplish the philosophical purpose, so thought Saul; but this is 
unphilosophical. If a project, purpose, or end be philosophical, the 
method by which it is promoted must be philosophical. This was 
Saul's break-down, the break-down of method. Under the influence 
of Judaism, and reckless of method, he could imprison helpless 
women without compunction, and sanction the murder of devout dis- 
ciples without a thought of wrong. Saul's personal attitude is the 
attitude of prejudice, because his religion is insufficient to deliver 
him from it, and because his method of activity is such as to keep 
it alive and give it edge and power. The need of another religion 
might be founded on Saul's relation to the old faith, and its effect 
on him. 

Saul's career as the antagonist of Christianity is of short duration. 



NECESSITY OF SAUL'S CONVERSION. 363 

He meant to make short work of the new faith, little thinking that his 
zeal, his genius, his spirit of leadership, and the dialectical habit of his 
mind, would be employed for twenty years in the defense of that 
which he seemed ambitious to destroy. He was permitted to exercise 
his powers in the wrong direction, as a prophecy of what he could do 
when he should turn in the right direction. Viewing his conversion 
as a providential event, it was a strategic move to deprive Judaism 
of its chief advocate, and reinforce Christianity by the very agency 
which threatened to extirpate it. The conversion of Gamaliel would 
not have been of so great service to the rising faith as that of Paul. 
Education, scholarship, genius, logic, religious faith, and religious 
zeal, may be regarded as a legitimate and absolutely imperative part 
of the equipment of an apostle ; but, with these and nothing more, 
Saul's preparation had been markedly incomplete. His religious atti- 
tude toward Christianity must be changed before he can proclaim or 
defend it ; his moral nature must undergo the transforming power of 
Christianity before he can define or recommend it. No change is re- 
quired in his education; the change required is religious. No other 
school must he needs attend but the school of Christ. 

The conversion of Saul, like any case of conversion, was a most 
wonderful event in its character, circumstances, processes, and extent 
of results. There is in Scripture no other conversion so fully re- 
ported, and human history furnishes no instance that parallels it. It 
stands alone, and properly ; for, as Saul had represented Judaism, so 
thereafter he must represent Christianity, both as a system of truth, 
and as the source of regenerating power. This he can not do without 
positive experience. It is imperative that he pass through Christian- 
ity, or rather that Christianity pass through him, that he may know 
what it is and what it can do. No such necessity is imposed by any 
other religion. An intellectual acquaintance with its truths, or with 
itself as a system of truths, and a belief in them, is all that religion 
required until Christianity, which, in addition thereto, required a 
spiritual apprehension of its truths, and a spiritual experience of their 
meaning and power. Conversion, according to Christianity, is not 
merely an intellectual change, or a change of belief, or a change of 
sentiments, or a change of truths. Important as such change is, and 
involved in conversion as it is, it is not conversion. Nor may it be 
defined as a change of relations to religion ; for, while such change 
is a condition, it is not the essence, of the religious life, regenera- 
tion, involving external relations or conduct, and internal relations 
or the intellectual attitude, is richer in its spiritual content, and more 
comprehensive in its spiritual range, than either. It has reference to 
a new life in man ; it is an organic spiritual life that did not previ- 



364 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ously exist. When it occurs, it equals a new birth, so great is the 
change in character. The old life dies; the new life begins. With 
its occurrence, every thing changes; the man is new — new in his 
sentiments, new in his faith, new in his external relations, new in his 
intellectual apprehensions, new in his spiritual life. Language can 
not adequately portray the change; it can only declare that it has 
taken place. 

This change Christianity requires of its subjects ; it never required 
any thing less ; it did not require less of Saul. In his case, however, 
the order of change is the reverse of that which usually takes place 
in one who fully accepts the Lord Jesus Christ as the Savior. Fre- 
quently, the external change, or change of relation, and the internal 
change, or change of sentiment, belief, appreciation, precede the 
spiritual change, or change of nature wrought by supernatural power. 
It sometimes happens that intellectual conversion takes place long 
before spiritual conversion, and, as a rule, the former precedes the 
latter. Saul, however, was spiritually converted before his intellectual 
judgment of Christianity changed or conformed to the spiritual ideal 
of life. His intellectual, that is, philosophical, attitude toward 
Christianity made it impossible for him calmly and thoroughly to 
examine the spiritual truths of the new religion, and without exam- 
ination he could not receive it. In his case, therefore, there is no 
attempt on his part to inform himself of the essential meaning of 
Christianity, and no providential agency employed to arrest his thought 
or convince his judgment. Hence, the suggestion of a psychological 
explanation of his conversion made by Pfleiderer is unwarranted, for 
not a single precedent psychological condition is involved in it. 
There is no previous examination of Christianity ; there is no previous 
change in the mental attitude of Saul respecting Christianity; there 
is no psychological conversion antedating the spiritual revolution in 
his life. The psychological conversion is subsequent to, and the re- 
sult of, the spiritual conversion. The primary change occurring first, 
secondary changes immediately followed. The external relation of 
Saul to the new religion at once conformed to the new life begotten 
in him by the Spirit of God. Separation from Judaism was the in- 
evitable result of a change of affection toward it, or an absence of 
attachment for it. An inward preference for Christianity seizing 
him, he was bound by the expulsive power of the new affection to 
abandon the old faith and declare for the new. Christianity, rooting 
itself in the soul-life, does more than manipulate the sentiments; it 
molds the affections, and wins the subject in spite of mental remon- 
strance or social resistance. Saul found himself a changed man ; as 
a result, his relations to Judaism and Christianity regulated them- 



ACCOUNTS OF THE CONVERSION. 365 

selves, and his intellectual attitude harmonized with his spiritual 
experience. 

Sometimes the conversion of Paul is referred to as a miracle, but, 
as it seems to us, in forgetfulness of what constitutes a miracle, and 
of what conversion is, its purpose iu this case, and, in the larger sense, 
its design in the economy of Christianity. Unless every conversion 
is a miracle, this particular conversion can not be explained as a 
miracle. In its important features, it does not differ from conversions 
in general ; in the order of preparation for conversion, Saul's experi- 
ence differs from the majority; in the "accessories" of the event, 
there are some unusual, if not miraculous, signs or displays, but these 
must not be identified with the event itself. Pentecost, or the great 
spiritual baptism of the infant Church, was in no sense miraculous, 
though the appendages of the occasion were very striking, and even 
miraculous. Saul was converted by the Holy Ghost, just as every 
human being must be who is converted ; his apprehensions of Christ 
were changed as Christ manifested himself to him ; and, surrendering 
immediately, and accepting without debate the entire truth of Christ, 
he was converted. The divine agencies employed in the conversion of 
others were likewise employed in the conversion of the man of Tarsus. 
There is no difference in agency; it is the same power, the same 
wisdom, the same glory. The difference between his conversion and 
that of others is the difference of antecedent preparation, or order of 
change, and the difference in the method of spiritual manifestation 
and attendant paraphernalia. The conversion itself was the spiritual 
change wrought by the divine Spirit, with only a difference of order 
in preparation and method in manifestation. The differences are 
minor; the event itself is the principal thing. 

Of this conversion, three accounts are given in the New Testa- 
ment, substantially agreeing to the most minute particulars. Luke 
relates it quite fully in the ninth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, 
and Paul himself reports it in detail, first, in the temple in Jerusalem, 
and, second, before Festus and Agrippa in Csesarea. The salient 
points are discovered at a glance. Embittered because of the rapid 
progress of Christianity, and fearing its future ascendency in the 
World, the Kabbi resolves upon an immediate and decisive inaugura- 
tion of agencies for its suppression. It does not appear that this 
movement against the disciples of the Lord is prompted by a concerted 
action of the school of Gamaliel, or by any consultation with the 
priests of Jerusalem. Saul is originator of the scheme of opposi- 
tion. All he asks is a commission from the authorities to proceed. 
Obtaining the requisite letters, and selecting his body-guard, he hastily 
and joyfully departs from Jerusalem on his way to Damascus, with 



366 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the avowed purpose of rescuing Judaism from its new and dangerous 
environment, of extinguishing the new religion. The journey is a 
difficult one. The crossiDg of the Anti-Lebanon range is wearisome, 
because slow and unattractive. At last the party begin to descend 
the eastern slopes, from which the wide-extended plain in which 
Damascus is situated is plainly visible. Practically, the journey is 
ended ; a ride of three hours, and the gates of the embowered city 
will open to the footsteps of the arch-oppressor. The jaded horses are 
spurred, for the leader of the company is anxious to suppress the re- 
ligious revolution, the head-quarters of which have been transferred 
to Damascus. They ride rapidly, and without solemnity. It is a ride 
of victory. Over that road the writer himself has traveled, and 
halted where Saul halted about the noon-hour. Just beyond is 
the city. 

Human calculations sometimes fail, human endeavors sometimes 
are for nought. In a moment the city fades from Saul's sight, the 
mountain journey is forgotten, and all earthly things are unknown to 
this ringleader of persecutors. He falls as if the mountain behind 
had rolled upon him ; he hears a voice, but it is not that of man ; he 
sees a face, but it is not that of one who belongs to the earth. 
Helpless, blind, reserved, and calm, Saul is a prisoner of the higher 
powers. Helpless as a child, he is conducted into the city slowly and 
with reverent step. The hilarity of one hour ago is superseded by a 
solemnity that the body-guard themselves share ; the malicious scheme 
of their leader withers in his hands like poisonous flowers, and is for- 
ever cast aside ; and on he goes to the appointed house of Judas, on 
the street called Straight, to receive instruction. What a change! 
Expecting to enter the city with a shout, he goes with prayer on his 
lips ; thinking to enter the gates with delight, he enters as a blind 
man, not knowing whither others may lead him ; intending to slaughter 
the disciples, he is at once ushered into their company, and is depend- 
ent on them for comfort and instruction. Ananias, living on one of 
the crooked streets of the city, was deputed by the Holy Ghost im- 
mediately to proceed to the house of Judas, where, finding Saul, he 
laid his hands on him, and he received his sight and also the Holy 
Ghost. Here is a double vision ; temporal sight restored, and spirit- 
ual sight fully given. Saul is numbered with the disciples, and known 
thereafter as Paul. 

The inquiry as to the time of Paul's conversion is pertinent, since 
some writers hold that the work of regeneration was performed and 
completed on the plain, and that the subsequent baptism received at 
the house of Judas was a second or distinct spiritual work ; while 
others insist that regeneration in its initial stages occurred at the 



APOSTOLIC EQUIPMENT OF PAUL. 367 

noon-hour, and was completed at the end of three days on the visita- 
tion of Ananias to Saul. There seems to be no sufficient reason for 
doubting that conversion actually took place on the plain, for Saul 
surrendered to Christ, and became obedient as a child. By that act 
he renounced Judaism, abandoned his mission to Damascus, and de- 
sired at once to enter upon the service of the Master. As Dr. W. 
M. Taylor expresses it, ' ' the spiritual crisis was over before Ananias 
appeared," and the Christian life was already a reality to Saul. 

Believing this position invulnerable, it remains to interpret the 
spiritual baptism at the house of Judas. What was it, or what did 
it signify ? It signified either a second work of the Spirit, commonly 
called sanctification, or a special spiritual preparation for the apostolic 
office; the latter seems the more rational interpretation. To be sure, 
if regeneration was experienced on the plain, it might seem as if 
sanctification was the after-experience in the city. This is possible, 
and, within certain limits of view, probable ; but when it is remem- 
bered that Paul was a chosen vessel to bear the great Name to the 
Gentiles, and that he must suffer many things for Christ's sake, it is 
natural to infer that the baptism was a preparation for apostolic life. 
It is true that sanctification will prepare the minister for ministerial 
life, as it does the average Christian for the Christian life; but be- 
yond these religious conditions is that peculiar state or prerogative 
which inheres in the apostolic or ministerial office, for which special 
education is required. If, then, we teach that the ceremony at the 
house of Judas was the induction of Paul into his apostolate, and 
that the spiritual baptism then received was the full and final 
apostolic equipment of the candidate, it is because the record of the 
event will bear the interpretation without doing injustice to the other. 

The effect of the spiritual transformation on Paul was as deep 
and radical as the transformation itself. It was all-important that he 
should recognize the supernatural character of the change through 
which he had passed, or its loftiest benefit had not been appropriated. 
Judaism did not emphasize the doctrine of regeneration as the con- 
dition of entrance into the kingdom of ,God. The old administration 
was content with its elaboration of the doctrine of the Fatherhood of 
God, and imposed upon men those duties that grew out of faith in 
divine providence. Spiritual change, as formulated by the New 
Testament teachers, was but dimly apprehended by the old economists, 
many of whom, in particular Joseph, Moses, Elijah, Samuel, and 
Daniel, were as saintly in their lives and as enthusiastically devoted 
to religion as Peter, James, and John, of later times. But the Jew 
of Paul's day, darkened by traditions, and stunted in his growth, had 
no correct conception of what is known as spiritual regeneration. 



368 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Saul himself was a bigoted Pharisee, a zealous formalist, and a heroic 
guardian of the old faith; but his was not a biogenetic faith. He 
must experience regeneration ; he must not only be converted by su- 
pernatural power, but the inward change must be supernatural. The 
change occurring, it separated him from the old faith, as restored health 
separates from diseased conditions. The new faith became his life. 

In this change the beginning of Paul's relation to Christianity is 
apparent. He did not embrace it from a previous knowledge of its 
merits, or from a long-standing conviction of its truth; he had not 
discussed it with Peter, as Luther and Dr. Eck discussed the two 
phases of the Christian faith, and, being vanquished, had yielded the 
old and accepted the new faith ; he had not been persuaded by 
friends, or even warned by Providence that any truth of Christianity 
was vital to his happiness or usefulness ; but he is changed by the 
power that makes for righteousness, and he would sooner have de- 
nied himself than deny the Lord who mercifully overwhelmed him 
with light. He recognized the supernatural character of his 
transformation. 

Its more manifest effect was the reconstruction, not only of certain 
temporary plans, but also of his entire life-plan, which hitherto had 
been devoted to the maintenance of Judaism. From the moment of 
his equipment for the apostleship he entered upon it, severing the 
ties that bound him to the Judaic dispensation, and renouncing al- 
legiance to those duties which he had voluntarily assumed. Paul is 
more than a disciple — he is henceforth a preacher of the religion he 
aimed to destroy. By his education and general training ; by his knowl- 
edge of Judaism and his acquaintance with the Jewish nation ; and by 
his relations to the Gentile world, he is fitted for a public career, and at 
once engages in public tasks, and duties. By his conversion, so deep 
and so thorough ; by his obedient and trustful spirit ; by his heroism 
and consecrated zeal, he is qualified to proclaim Christianity to all the 
world, and begins to preach in Damascus, the very city that was to 
witness the extinction of the truth that now filled his heart. He does 
not wait to be examined, licensed, or put on probation, but goes 
forth to declare the revelation of Christ to him. It was always the 
boast of Paul that he received his call from the Lord ; that he preached 
not by the will of man, and that what he taught was that which he re- 
ceived from God. This made him confident in spirit and invincible 
in argument. He preached, not his sentiments, nor the traditions of 
others, but what came to him through the channels of regeneration 
and revelation. No other such instance is known to the Church. As 
to the ministry, vox ecelesice is considered supreme ; but no Church 
votes him a license, and no apostles ordain him to the sacred office. 



SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION OF CONVERSION. 369 

In a sense he is above organizations, orders, institutions, for he is in 
charge of the Christ whom he persecuted. He stands pre-eminently 
above the apostles, and is the noblest, because the truest, exponent of 
Christianity. 

It is not surprising that so complete and radical a change in his 
character and conduct should give rise to various explanations of the 
alleged conversion ; nor is it surprising that, since it was a genuine 
conversion, all explanations that eliminate the supernatural element 
utterly fail to satisfy the inquirer. Baur says that "in his sudden 
transformation from the most vehement adversary into the most reso- 
lute herald of Christianity, we can see nothing short of a miracle." 
It was not a miracle, for conversions are occurring constantly ; but it 
impresses - scholarly men as something wonderful, as catastrophic in 
human history, to be explained only by supernatural intervention, 
and is therefore of the nature of a miracle. The fact of the con- 
version can not be denied. It is a matter of record in profane as in 
sacred history, in Jewish as in Christian writings. It must therefore 
be explained. Several theories have been propounded for the clearing 
up of the profound mystery which is involved in the historic event. 

The ' ' scientific " explanation excites interest. If the event has 
any natural ground, or was a purely rationalistic process, and can be 
made so to appear, then the supernatural feature will disappear ; but, 
even if such a solution is possible, it does not alter the stupendous 
fact of Saul's changed attitude and career. The career of Paul is mar- 
velous, even if the offspring of the naturalistic spirit. Kenan, 
espousing the suggestions of Baur in particular, and assuming to be- 
lieve that Luke's account and Paul's as well, of the conversion-scene, 
is a mythological narrative, clothes the event with natural drapery, 
and transposes it into an effect of atmospheric conditions and phys- 
ical environment. He assumes a thunder-storm in progress on the 
plain. Saul, now across the mountains, with city in sight, is be- 
wildered with expectation of victory ; his head is turned ; the sun 
pours down its heat upon his excited brow ; he babbles like one with 
fever ; he reels on his horse as if sun-struck ; the lightnings flash and 
his ophthalmic eyes suffer and start with tears ; the thunder roars, and 
he falls to the ground. All this is possible. These, however, are 
external conditions ; these are physical states, to obtain which Renan 
drew on his imagination, for the Scriptural account does not contain 
them. It makes no reference to a storm, or that Saul was bewil- 
dered, or sick, or sun-struck. Besides, if the atmospheric conditions 
were such as he describes, the men with Saul must have suffered 
likewise, or been affected in a similar way ; but, while he fell to the 
earth, they stood; while he saw Jesus Christ, they "saw no man;" 

24 



370 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

while he talked, they were speechless ; while they heard a voice they un- 
derstood it not. It is at least strange that no one is affected as is Saul. 

If Saul's condition was the result of physical causes, then a phy- 
sician would have been called so soon as the party arrived in the 
city ; but it seems that physical remedies were not sought either by 
himself or his friends. Saul understood himself, and preferred the 
remedy of discipleship. 

A singular feature of the proceeding on the plain is the conversa- 
tion that ensued between Saul and his invisible interlocutor. A "voice " 
is heard by the men with Saul. They did not pronounce it thunder, as 
does Renan. " Who ever heard the thunder," asks Dr. Schaff, " speak 
in Hebrew or in any other articulate language?" Thunder, light- 
ning, sun-stroke, ophthalmia, these are natural phenomena; but the 
" voice," the conversation, the obedient purpose, the changed attitude, 
the extinct rebellion in Saul, the spiritual preference, the love of dis- 
cipleship, and the new life of that hour, are signs of a spiritual 
phenomenon, not to be explained by the legerdemain of a storm, or 
the heroic vacillation of a feverish sinner. 

The unsoundness of the physical theory of Saul's conversion being 
discovered, the Tubingen school of rationalists have proposed a 
pyschological explanation of it, which, superior to the other in that 
it interprets it as an intellectual or subjective process, is as inade- 
quate as the other, and to be abandoned as quickly and as rationally 
as one abandons the other. Holsten is the principal defender of this 
theory. It is alleged that Saul, all his lift-time, was subject to 
visions and delusions, which prepared him for the great hallucination 
to which he finally submitted. On his way to Damascus he was 
reticent, introspective, meditating on the testimony of Stephen, 
and absorbed with the great designs of the crucified Christ, as they 
had reached his ears. In this self-forgetting state of mind, wonder- 
ing if, after all, the new Master might not be the promised Messiah, 
and silently, but perceptibly, gravitating toward such a belief, he 
found himself within sight of the oldest city in the world ; and, in- 
stinctively and religiously revolting against the mission he had planned 
respecting the Lord's disciples, he swooned as if sun-struck, but was 
really stunned by his conscience and overcome by remorse of guilt. 
During the swoon, or trance, he had a supposed vision of the Lord, 
and heard his voice and conversed with him, the result being a per- 
manent modification of religious belief and a new direction to his sub- 
sequent life. 

The difference between the physical and the psychological theories 
is that the former attributes the conversion to external causes, 
while the latter attributes it to internal conditions. The one is ob- 



PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF CONVERSION. 371 

jective, the other subjective ; the one refers the event to the influence 
of nature, the other to human or mental activity. Neither attributes it 
to the supernatural, or involves a single supernatural element. The 
event is a natural or human, and not a supernatural, event. If, how- 
ever, the conversion was a purely subjective event, it establishes that 
Saul was the victim of his own delusion, and not the victim of an- 
other's hallucination. He was self-deceived, others did not deceive 
him. He saw a form, a face, but it was unreal, it was the invention 
of a highly excited imagination ; he heard a voice, but it, too, was 
unreal, it was the echo of his own thought. Saul must, therefore, be 
viewed as an unbalanced heretic, erring by reason of his imagination, 
drifting suddenly into mysticism because unable to restrain the activ- 
ity of his idealistic faith, — all of which is contrary to the temperament, 
education, career, and profession of Saul, who is understood to have 
been a man with little or no imagination, with no poetic fervor, with 
no training in mystical lore ; a man disciplined by danger, cool in 
emergency, and never given to delirium, either in his religions or so- 
cial life. To establish the theory will require a new portraiture of 
Saul, a blotting out of his well-known characteristics, and the inven- 
tion of a man entirely different from the Apostle to the Gentiles. 

Equally fatal to the theory is the consideration that had Saul in a 
moment of excitement abjured Judaism, from the temporary belief 
that Christianity is the final religion, he would afterward, when 
reason was again installed, have reviewed his hasty action and re- 
turned to the embrace of the old faith. If, when in a delirium or 
dream, Christianity appeared to him true, when rational and self- 
restrained it might have appeared false, in which* event he would have 
abandoned it. But it seems that in his rational moments, as in the 
delirium, he declared for Christ on the ground that he had both seen 
and heard him"; and there was no disposition, after his examination 
of the two religions, to confess haste or error in turning from one to 
the other. Even if it could be granted that the conversion, being 
psychological, was a delusion, it can not be said that the subsequent 
rational judgment of Saul respecting Christianity wa§ a delusion, or the 
error of his imagination. 

Prof. Reuss, of Strassburg, detecting the weakness of the psycho- 
logical theory, pronounced the conversion an " unsolved psychological 
problem ;" but it is not a psychological any more than it is a physical 
problem. It is a supernatural problem, lifted out of the circle of the 
physical and the psychological, the only solution of which is the 
actual manifestation of Christ to Saul, and the work of his Spirit in 
the heart of the Hebrew. If Paul's testimony to the event is insuf- 
ficient to establish it, his career in defense of it is unanswerable ; his 



372 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

after-life is an irresistible argument for the truth of Christianity. 
Behold the scholar and the Christian; behold the educated and the 
converted man! Education and religion are his special equipments 
for his life-work, which is foreshadowed in the revelation to Ananias 
that Saul is chosen as the Apostle to the Gentiles. 

In addition to these equipments Paul's endowments, or his tem- 
peramental and natural heritage must be catalogued, in order fully 
to comprehend the adaptation of the man to his providential assign- 
ment. He was not chosen wholly on the ground of his scholarship or 
conversion, but also because of certain natural forces or qualities 
which, independent of scholarship and religious training, constituted 
the elemental man, but which, refined by culture and restrained and 
directed by religion, constituted him the incessant toiler, the invinci- 
ble hero, and the unrivaled apostle in the Christian Church. Of 
the moral qualities native to the man, none is more conspicuous than 
his sincerity of conviction and transparency of purpose, which always 
governed him, whether as a Pharisee or a Christian. He wore no 
mask, and, free from self-deception, scorned to deceive others. He 
was not an enigma, working in the dark, and with an unsettled pur- 
pose in life. He had a distinct duty before him, and proclaimed it 
everywhere. He was known as the sincere and positive defender of 
what he believed and taught as the truth. Such a man could not' be 
negative or neutral, but was always on one side or the other in every 
issue. Outspoken, honest, and conscientious, he struck heavy blows 
for his cause, and defended it from conviction. If he aroused antag- 
onism, he also was honored for the simplicity of his aims and the 
earnestness of his methods. In his plans, labors, discussions, and ag- 
gressions he would refer to the approbation of his conscience as proof 
that he Avorked from a high motive, and with a desire to promote the 
reign of righteousness in the world. 

He, however, was more than the moral man; he was sincere, 
honest, transparent, and tremendously in earnest ; but his religious 
spirit eclipsed the moral side of his life. He went beyond the ethical 
into the positively religious. None was more scrupulous in the ob- 
servance of the Jewish festivals, in the repetition of the Talmudic 
traditions, and in the use of the Jewish rituals, than Saul. In his self- 
defense before his countrymen and before magistrates he boasted of 
his constant obedience of Jewish law, of his practice of benevolence 
under the tithe system, of his manifold works, sacrifices, and prayers, 
as prescribed by the temple party, and of his intense appreciation of 
Judaism. As his moral impulses expressed themselves in a sincere 
and transparent life, so his religious spirit expressed itself in and 
through the national religion of Palestine, to which he was more 



PAUL'S INTELLECTUAL TEMPERAMENT. 373 

devoted than the rabbis of the schools. To be sure, he was only cere- 
monially, and not therefore sufficiently, religious ; but he was devout, 
reverent, truth-loving, the antagonist of error, and the hater of 
wrong. He believed in holiness, as Moses taught it; in fraternity, 
as Abraham exemplified it ; in justice, as Joshua enforced it ; in re- 
pentance, as David illustrated it; in wisdom, as Solomon used it; in 
foresight, as the prophets exhibited it ; in courage, as Elijah demon- 
strated it ; in consistency, as Daniel lived it ; in monotheism, as 
Habakkuk taught it; in worship, as Nehemiah enjoined it; and in 
the coming Messiah, as Isaiah and Micah had foretold the fact. Saul 
was the old dispensation over again. He was the incarnation of the 
patriarchs, the judges, tlie kings, and the prophets. His was the religion 
of the fathers in human life again. Saul was moral, he was religious 
by nature. This was a strong point in his character, and biased him 
in the choice of a life profession. 

Intellectually, it is not enough to say he was superior to John the 
Baptist, who may have been his school-mate in Jerusalem, or superior 
to Gamaliel, who was the professor of law in the University of Jeru- 
salem, or superior to the men of his age ; he was a giant, without a 
rival in his day, without an equal since his time. His was a broad- 
gauge mind, apprehending truth in all aspects and relations, and cov- 
eting knowledge as if it were his individual inheritance. A truth- 
seeker, the weakness of error soon disclosed itself under his analytic 
process, and retired from his presence ; half-truths yielded to his logic, 
and quit the field without a conflict. Severely logical, he was un- 
compromising when the truth was found, and, with the aid of revela- 
tion, he was always sure to find it. What Paul was in his apostolic 
life, as a logician and teacher, he was in an embryonic state in his 
youth and early manhood. He was the logical youth, the mathe- 
matical man, the intellectual teacher, the doctrinal apostle. 

His national spirit, or love of his people, was rare in its integrity 
and ungovernable in its expression. It is altogether probable that 
Palestine, like Cilicia, was without the power to affect him, for the 
aesthetic sense either did not exist or was never awakened in him ; but 
his people aroused his patriotism, their history kindled his pride and 
enthusiasm, and their religion received his reverence and devotion. 
His is not the attachment to country, but love for a people. In this 
one-sided patriotism was his special fitness for the apostolate, which 
required him practically to forsake his country but not his people. 
His love of locality was not strong ; hence he itinerated without 
regret ; he longed not for particular spots or scenes ; he was at home 
everywhere — in Rome as in Damascus, in Athens as in Antioch, in 
Ephesus as in Jerusalem. Palestine did not charm ; localities did not 



374 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

fascinate. But in all places he met his ' ' kinsmen according to the 
flesh," to whom he was eager to preach Christ and him crucified. 
Even when he turned to the Gentiles, shaking from his feet the dust 
of the cities of Israel, he never forgot the Jewish race, but prayed for 
their repentance unto life. Still, remembering that the last shall be 
first, and the first last, he devoted his energies to the indoctrination 
of the Gentile world, which, however steeped in heathenism, was 
more susceptible to spiritual influence, and really anxious for the 
light of the new truth. 

In a very eminent degree Paul was possessed of the genius of 
leadership, another qualification for his apostolate. It is trifling with 
his career to accuse him of ambition, and discreditable to his history 
to impeach him of a love of place ; for, while able to meet the re- 
quirements of exalted station, it does not appear that place was 
sought, or that he was unhappy when dispossessed of it. As a 
Pharisee, he occupied the highest rank ; socially, he was admitted 
into the most refined and cultured households ; and as a religious 
teacher, none was more respected, and none received larger emolu- 
ment or nobler honor. Recognition, place, honor, estate, all were 
his so long as he was a Pharisee. All were lost so soon as he pro- 
fessed faith in the Messiah. Recognition, except in the form of per- 
secution, is denied him ; honors are withheld, and the position he oc- 
cupied declared vacant ; estates collapse at his feet, and the world 
recedes in his presence. It has nothing to offer him, and robs him of 
that which it formerly conferred. Surely ambition dies when it has 
nothing to feed on, and love of place perishes when it disappears 
from the vision of man. It was not innate ambition that qualified 
Paul for leadership. 

The energy of Paul was sui generis. It was the energy of personality. It 
was not the expression of animalic force, but the outburst of his intel- 
lectual and religious life in consolidated action. One sees it in Elijah, 
Luther, Cromwell, Mohammed, Knox, Hildebrand, Caesar, and Char- 
lemagne. It is the inside life turned into outside events. It is the 
substance of the heroic, the guarantee of achievement. Paul was sur- 
pliced with heroism. His was the energy of lightning ; his the en- 
thusiasm of fire. Dr. Schaff reports that "he combined Semitic 
fervor, Greek versatility, and Roman energy." In him centered 
the aristocracy of power, the royalty of courage, and the gener- 
osity of light. 

One may sometimes arrive at a knowledge of physical forces by a 
study of them from two stand-points. For instance, one may deter- 
mine the beneficence of electricity by the destruction it is able to 
accomplish ; that is, the useful or helpful power of electricity may 



KEY TO LEADERSHIP. 375 

be suspected from its power to do harm. In like manner, one may 
also predicate the utility of fire from its ability to destroy. In such 
cases destruction is the measure of the conservative value of force. 
By such a rule men may sometimes be judged ; that is, their power 
for mischief is the measure of their power for good, their evil life 
affords a basis of calculation of what their righteous life may become. 
The actual in one direction is the suggestion of the possible in the 
opposite direction, as the swing of the pendulum on one side indicates 
the possible, if not certain, ascent on the other. Constantine, a pagan 
ruler, then a Christian king ; Luther, a Catholic, then a Protestant ; 
John Bunyan, a prisoner in the cell, then a writer of Christian alle- 
gory ; Peter, the fisherman, then an apostle, — illustrates the rule by 
which one kind of life is the key to another possible kind of life. 
The most conspicuous example of history is the apostle Paul, who, 
in his Pharisaical life, was courageous from conviction, shrewd in 
schemes of destruction, despotic in their execution, self-reliant in 
emergencies, and usually triumphant in his purposes. The frag- 
mentary biography of the Pharisee indicates a persevering, resolute, 
iron-clad, and successful man. Such a record is the key to his pos- 
sibilities as a Christian. Given to leadership in the one sphere, he is 
competent for it in the other. The very qualities that rendered him 
a terror to the infant Church, qualified him for aggressive movements 
in its behalf, and rendered him an object of dread to the temple 
party. The Jew knew that a leader had gone when Saul became a 
Christian. Of his weaknesses few are recorded against him, though 
it is allowed that he partook of imperfection and grieved over it, as 
other men grieve over their infirmities. He was a man of temper, as 
is evident from his treatment of Peter and his quarrel with Barnabas ; 
but the weakness of the man was the measure of his strength. Temper 
is personality on fire. No hero equals the Son of man in moral per- 
fection. Abraham, Moses, David, John, Peter, and Paul are 
eclipsed by the Sun of Righteousness. Granting imperfection to the 
hero of Cilicia, no one will question his fitness for leadership or his 
adaptation to the apostolate. 

In a previous paragraph we say, Behold the scholar and the 
Christian ! we now say, Behold the man !. His preparation for the high 
office of apostleship is now complete ; complete because he is a scholar; 
complete because he is a Christian ; complete because he is a man. His 
future is assured, because there are poured into it the rich treasures of 
scholarship, the eternal forces of religion, and the plenary glories of 
a model manhood. 

The revolution in Paul's history was twofold in character; it was 
religious, arising from spiritual regeneration, it was intellectual or 



376 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

doctrinal, arising from the new experience and the new revelation. 
The religious revolution, already reported, preceded the intellectual 
revolution now to be considered. A psychological conversion did not 
antedate or prepare the way for the spiritual conversion ; the reverse 
actually occurred. Hence, Paul's ideas of the Christian religion were 
primarily shaped by his unexpected religious experiences ; his 
thoughts are religious because his experiences are religious; his 
doctrines are spiritual because he first apprehended the truth in its 
relation to himself. In studying Plato one is constantly impressed 
that his "Ideas" are supreme and constitute the essence of phi- 
losophy ; so in studying Paul one can not escape the conviction that 
his "Ideas" are the ground of Christian thought and constitute the 
essence of the truest theology. Paul's Ideas, therefore, must be 
sought out, separated from all other ideas, and indorsed as the con- 
tents of the religion of the Master. 

No injustice is done others in claiming that Paul's intellectual 
work stands alone, is unequaled by that of any other apostle, and 
must be regarded as the all-sufficient exponent of the mind of God 
in the revelation of truth. He was set apart, not merely as an 
apostle, to be a herald of messages or worker of miracles, or as a 
missionary of the new faith, but also as a theologian, a teacher of 
truth, an expounder of mysteries, and a revealer of the wisdom of 
God in his religious plans respecting this world. Others wrought 
miracles ; others preached ; others wrote ; but he was commissioned 
to formulate the divine truth-ideals in theologic form, for the use of 
the Christian Church and the enlightenment of the unsaved world. 
In this direction he went farther than any other sacred writer, hold- 
ing up the light a little higher, and calling with a still louder voice 
to mankind to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. The characteristics 
of the Pauline theology; the merits of his interpretations; the 
harmony of his views with those of the Master ; the range of his in- 
tellectual vision, and the spiritual truths that he unfolds, making 
clear what was obscure, strengthening what seemed to be weak, and 
defending what was liable to attack ; are enough to engage the 
closest thought of the profoundest inquirer for a life-time. 

Paul's ideas are divine ideas. He affirms as much when he says, 
"The Gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I 
neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revela- 
tion of Jesus Christ." This affidavit, conscientiously made, is im- 
portant ; for it clearly signifies that he was not educated or disciplined 
into a belief of Christianity, or that he had received it second-hand, 
or borrowed it in any sense from man. The apostles were not his 
principal instructors ; he had no primary teachers. He acquired a 



STEPHEN'S INFL UENCE ON PA UL. 377 

knowledge of the truth in no circuitous way, in no school-like way, 
in no alphabetical way; nor had he imbibed it as a popular senti- 
ment, but received it as an inspiration from God. Not by laying on 
of hands, not by any physiological process of communicating spiritual 
things, did he enter into sympathy with the truth or an honest 
adoption of it. Nor does it appear that by a rationalistic process he 
wrought out the truth, or planned to discover it, or found it as other 
men find the truth. To him the truth unsought came ; upon him it 
fell as light falls upon the earth, as rain falls upon the grass. In 
this respect he is alone. No philosopher obtains truth except by 
seeking it; no human mind receives spiritual truth except through 
sympathy with it and ardent searching for it. Paul is authoritative, 
not as a discoverer of truth, but as the receiver of truth ; he is the 
echo of the divine voice ; he is the truth. Less than this can not be 
granted ; more than this is not required. 

However, the inspirational attitude of Paul, as a teacher of truth, 
must be understood as including all those complex influences which 
joined in his education and prepared him to be a receiver of truth. 
Not every man can receive as much as' Paul; not every mind 
can comprehend as much as Paul. A gulf is larger than a rivulet ; 
Paul's gulf-mind took in more than the creek-mind of Jude. Paul 
was intellectually prepared for revelations. Certain other influences, 
doctrinal and otherwise, also entered into his preparatory life, which, 
not recognized perhaps at the time by himself, contributed to that 
large theological grasping so noticeable in his later utterances and 
writings. Among these unrecognized forceful influences may be 
placed the theologic teaching of Stephen in his address for his life 
before the Sanhedrim, Saul hearing it and excited to wrath by it. 
The address, as a literary performance, was masterly ; as an argu- 
ment, it was unanswerable ; as a revelation of truth, it was full of 
surprises, and provoked the bitterest resentment in the minds of those 
educated in Judaism. It is altogether probable that Saul, then about 
thirty-five years old, reviewed the address in his own mind, and saw 
for the first time the radical difference between the faith of Christ 
and the religion of the Sanhedrim. The knowledge of this difference, 
instead of leading him to further inquiry, only infuriated him the 
more, and really provoked his contemplated massacre of the Christians 
in Damascus. Too much preparatory influence, however, has been 
attributed to Stephen in Saul's conversion. Augustine declared that if 
Stephen had not prayed, Paul had not been converted ; and Pressense 
holds that Stephen made so powerful an impression on Paul that he 
inaugurated a system of persecutions in order to quiet the tempest of 
his soul. This is conceding far too much ; the concession is a specu- 



378 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

lation. There is no evidence that Stephen's address influenced the 
psychological attitude of Paul, and indirectly led to his conversion ; 
but it is plain that, conversion having taken place, Stephen's theo- 
logic influence on Paul begins to be felt, as he recalls his testimony 
and remembers his martyrdom in its behalf. The truth reported by 
Stephen, Paul now believes and adopts. In his missionary addresses 
to the Jews, in his doctrinal epistles to the Churches, and in his 
prayers everywhere, Paul draws on the phraseology of Stephen, or 
employs some of the religious ideas of his address, showing that, 
while uninfluenced by him at the time, he recognized in his converted 
state the majesty of Stephen's utterances and the inspiration of the 
truths he then announced. Not denying the influence of Stephen, it 
is proper to insist that it had no educational, no theologic, power on 
Paul until after the revelation of the Messiah to him at the time of 
his conversion. Abraham Lincoln's addresses on the rights of slaves, 
or the inalienable right of all men to freedom, in the years 1856-1860, 
fell on dull ears in our great South-land ; but after the abolition of 
slavery even the South perceived the great truths that had been pre- 
viously uttered, and accepted them as basal thoughts of the nation's 
life. Truth does not always have an immediate effect on an unpre- 
pared mind ; it rarely has any effect on such a mind, except to in- 
flame it with hostility against it. Stephen's thoughts reappear, in 
Paul's Christian theology, and yet not to the extent or in any way to 
compromise the original claim of the apostle that he received the 
truth from Jesus Christ. Stephen's thoughts or truths, though heard 
before the trip to Damascus, came to Paul as influencing thoughts 
after the trip had been concluded, and were rather confirmatory than 
suggestive of the original revelation. 

Paul's claim to original revelation from Jesus Christ is sustained 
by the fact, which he himself relates, that, after a brief sojourn in 
Damascus, he retired to Arabia, where it is altogether probable he spent 
nearly three years in seclusion and meditation upon his new and great 
life-work. Just where he went, and whether or no he communicated 
during that period with any human being, are matters to which he does 
not allude, nor any one else ; but the inference is that he spent the time 
in a review of the Hebrew Scriptures in their Messianic features and 
references, and in a study of his new experiences and of the prepara- 
tion required for his new position. Evidently, he knew but little of 
the Scriptures in their references to the birth, works, career, and 
death of the Messiah, or he had discovered their fulfillment in Jesus 
of Nazareth. That he devoted himself in his solitude to the thorough 
examination of the Scriptures on these points is all but certain, as 
such knowledge was absolutely necessary to his future career as an 



PAUL'S THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION. 379 

apostle. Moreover, it is not extravagant to claim that, during the 
period of seclusion, the Lord Jesus again visited him, not as a re- 
prover or to discuss the question of duty with him, but as the glori- 
ous revealer of truth, and communicated to him many of the doctrines 
so elaborately presented in Paul's Epistles. To be sure, the facts of 
the incarnation, the baptism, the transfiguration, the miracles, the 
crucifixion, the resurrection, and ascension of Christ, may have been 
reported to Paul by the disciples of Damascus ; but the doctrinal in- 
terpretations growing out of such facts, such as regeneration, justifica- 
tion, atonement, faith, love, and redemption, may have been inspira- 
tions, or the result of personal fellowship with Christ. Arabia proved 
to be a theological school to Paul, in which the only teacher was the 
Master himself. In Jerusalem, Gamaliel taught him Judaism ; in 
Arabia, Christ taught him Christianity. The proof that the Arabian 
influence was helpful, whether the result of personal meditation or 
divine revelation, or both, as we judge it to have been', is in the im- 
proved tone of his preaching, or rather the positive affirmation of the 
Messiahship of Christ after his return to Damascus. To him Christ 
was the Son of God, not only because the prophecies of the Old Tes- 
tament were fulfilled in him, but also because Christ revealed himself 
as such to Paul, both at his conversion and while he was in Arabia. 
From careful study of the sacred books, Paul concluded the doctrine 
must be true ; but by revelation he knew it to be true. The theolog- 
ical education of Paul is constantly improving, because the revelations are 
continually increasing. 

The human element in Paul's education thus far is insignificant. 
Grant that Stephen's influence was considerable — it came later in life ; 
grant that the disciples of Damascus poured into his ears some of the 
truths of the new dispensation — his time with them was short, and he 
occupied most of it in preaching ; so that he makes good his claim that 
the truth came to him directly from Jesus Christ. If any human in- 
fluence made any impression upon him, and if any divinely called 
teacher was instrumental in his theological instruction, such influence 
was felt when he returned to Jerusalem a Christian man, and such 
instrumental teacher was the apostle Peter. Even his relationship to 
Peter must not be exaggerated; for Paul abode in Jerusalem only 
fifteen days, spending part of the time in securing recognition among 
the Christians, some of the time in visiting with James, the Lord's 
brother, and not a little of the remainder of time in disputing in the 
synagogues, and publicly affirming that Jesus is the Christ. Appar- 
ently, Paul must or might have learned much from Peter, James, 
Barnabas, and others in the Holy City ; he might have visited Geth- 
semane, and listened to its story of sorrow ; he could have gone to 



380 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Calvary, and heard in his heart the dying shout of the Eedeemer, 
and lingered long enough at the sepulcher to see the Victor rise ; he 
could have walked over to the Mount of Olives, and witnessed by 
faith the ascension of the Lord; and, retracing his steps, he could 
have tarried on the Pentecostal site until the holy baptism had been 
repeated in him. Paul may have been a sight-seer in Jerusalem, and 
Peter may have been his dragoman! We shall not insist that this is 
the case, because there are sufficient reasons for believing that the 
reverse is true. What Peter taught him, or whether Paul received 
any thing from him, or from any other in Jerusalem, or whether Paul 
enlightened Peter and the infant Church, are questions not settled in 
the Scriptural narrative. Naturally, one would suppose that Peter 
would communicate to Paul a full account of Christ's birth, ministry, 
and death ; and yet there is no record that the interview of the two 
apostles had any religious significance. Perhaps Paul impressed upon 
Peter that Christianity was larger in its intent than Judaism, and 
that both should bear it to the Gentile world ; perhaps Paul related 
his conversion, his revelations in Arabia, and the plan of his life-work 
as an apostle ; perhaps Paul declared the independence of his apostle- 
ship, and his amenability only to Jesus Christ. During this visit, it is 
not clear that Paul is particularly instructed by any body, but merely 
comforted or confirmed in his faith, while he may have instructed 
Peter and the Christians of Jerusalem in the broader things of God. 

The providential fellowship of Paul and Luke was, in the religious 
sense, more advantageous to the latter than the former, though, from 
the social stand-point, it was mutually helpful and comforting ; and, 
inasmuch as Luke was a physician, and Paul, especially after his en- 
counters with mobs, was physically dilapidated and ever on the border 
of a break-down, the services of the former were as necessary as they 
were refreshing. The religious alliances of Paul with Timotheus, 
Aquila, Luke, and others, should not be so interpreted as to convey 
the impression that he was to the smallest extent indebted to them 
for spiritual knowledge or the revelation of truth, for he was the 
Gospel father of many of his friends, and the instructor of those who 
had been longer in the faith than himself. His religious experience 
developed a social hunger, which was appeased only by Christian 
fellowship, which he ever sought and only rarely obtained. From all 
the data on the subject, the conclusion is warranted that Paul was 
not inducted into a knowledge of the Christian religion by man, but 
received religious truth, as he had spiritual experience, from Jesus 
Christ. The proof that Paul's ideas, whatever they are, are divine, 
is complete. 

To ascertain just what he received, or to state the contents of the 



CONFLICT WITH JUDAISM. 381 

Pauline theology, is our next business. In order to a complete tri- 
umph in his day, Christianity was compelled to contest the rights, 
teachings, and purposes of three organic religious ideas, because they 
were out of harmony with its spirit, and incapable of union with it on 
the grounds of rational, not to say revealed, truth. The necessary 
threefold conflict of Christianity with the opposing forces in human 
society is a key to the revelation made to Paul, and an explanation 
of his apostolic career. These conflicts were with — 

1. Judaism, a divinely ordained religion. 

2. Paganism, in its multiform organisms, or Gentilism. 

3. Philosophy, or Culture, religious and otherwise. 

The conflict of Christianity with Judaism has the appearance of a 
conflict of the supernatural with the supernatural, for the inspirational 
element abounds in the one as in the other; and that the one had a 
divine mission is as evident as that the other is ordained for the ac- 
complishment of a divine purpose. Why the conflict, then ? The re- 
lation of Judaism to Christianity it is not at all difficult to define ; but 
the Jew, because of perversity of judgment, never would recognize 
the relation, and has obstinately opposed that form of religion which 
in its inmost spirit is but the fulfillment of his holiest faith. In 
Paul's case, the religious revolution, otherwise his conversion, did not 
consist in a mere exchange of religious dogmas; it was really less an 
abandonment of certain Judaic sentiments, than a right interpretation 
of them and the discovery of their fulfillment in the new religion. 
Uninterpreted, and especially misinterpreted, Judaism in the hand 
of the Jew became a weapon of self-destruction ; rightly interpreted, 
it opened the way to the Lord Jesus Christ. Fortunately, Paul was 
impressed to put a right interpretation upon it, and began immediately 
after conversion to declare its propaedeutic office and relation to Chris- 
tianity. It was none the less divine because it was not a final religion. 
John the Baptist was none the less an inspired herald because Christ 
succeeded him. Judaism was the preliminary form, or advertisement, 
of the final faith, and dropped out of sight so soon as it was fulfilled. 

This was Paul's dictum everywhere, on account of which he 
was persecuted in every city, and suffered many things for Christ's 
sake. Because of this definition of Judaism, the Jews of Damascus 
organized to slay him, and he departed by night from the city, escap- 
ing by being let down "by the wall in a basket." Because of the 
espousal of Christianity on this basis, the Jews of Jerusalem deter- 
mined to kill him, and he again fled to another place of safety. In 
Asia Minor as in Syria, and in Macedonia as in Italy, the Jews 
exhibited toward him a malicious spirit. Judaizing teachers insisted 
on the observance of the Mosaic ritual as a condition of salvation, 



382 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

and obstructed the work of the apostle by tantalizing methods and 
false devices. The priests and elders were far-seeing enough to dis- 
cover that in proportion as the new faith spread the old faith must 
decline, and so were violent in their- denunciation of Jews who passed 
from the tutelage of the one into the experience of the other. When 
it was impossible to prevent the defection of their own people, or the 
Gentile multitudes from embracing the Messianic religion, they were 
ready to compromise on the basis of a mixed religion; that is, the 
Christian must be a believer in some of the Mosaic traditions and an 
observer of some of the Judaic ceremonies. 

A conflict on these lines was inevitable. It must be settled once for 
all to what extent the Judaic spirit shall affect the Christian life, or 
whether it shall not entirely disappear, giving place to the higher 
truth of Christianity, which shall be supreme in its authority over 
man. The Jews were troubled ; Jewish Christians, reverential in 
feeling toward the old dispensation, were agitated ; Gentile Christians, 
recognizing no obligation to Judaism, were aroused ; and the apos- 
tles themselves, eager perhaps to unite the two faiths, or bridge the 
distance between them, were anxious for a settlement of the difficult 
problem. After many triumphs in Gentile fields, Paul hastens to 
Jerusalem to report to a council of apostles and elders the work 
of grace among the Gentiles, and to discuss the necessity of the 
circumcision of Gentile converts, and how far Jewish laws and 
usages should prevail in the Christian Church. It was a remarkable 
council, both for the character of the disputants and the decisions 
finally reached. The fate of Christianity was involved in the issue. 
The council was divided in opinion in the beginning, but was har- 
monious in its conclusions, affirming the position of Paul, who de- 
nied the necessity of the circumcision of the Gentiles, but did not 
object to it in the case of Jewish Christians. He had taken Titus, 
a Gentile convert, with him, and demanded his exemption from the 
barbarous rite of the Jews. In this new position Peter loyally and 
fervently supported him ; James indorsed, but with no enthusiasm ; 
and the council, by a large majority, decreed the exemption of Gen- 
tile converts from circumcision and all other Jewish obligations. 
Christianity broke with Judaism on a fundamental point, and was 
relieved of future embarrassments. We see in Paul no compromising 
spirit, no jutting out of "liberal Christianity" when an essential 
principle is involved, and no disposition to yield what had been 
gained. Clearing the Christian Church of Jewish influence, which 
was Paul's open purpose, he intended that it should rest on a Chris- 
tian idea, to which all other ideas, laws, and usages should fully con- 
form. The concession of circumcision to Jewish Christians, which 



CONFLICT WITH GENTILISM. 383 

was agreed to by the apostles, was for the purpose of obtaining the 
favor of the Jews ; but Paul knew that if it did not involve them in 
future trouble it would soon expire. He himself agreed to it on 
the ground of expediency, and because it did not sacrifice the main 
principle. 

The dominant idea in the Christian Church, according to Paul, is 
Messiahship. This appeared in his experience, and it must be authori- 
tative in the Church. The idea itself meant separation from, because it 
was the fulfillment of, Judaism. Paul knew Judaism. He knew its 
heartlessness, its lack of spiritual power, the insignificance of its barren 
forms, the intellectual limitation of its highest truths, and the inertia of 
the whole economy. None knew it better than Paul. None was more 
anxious to save the Gentile world from it than he. It was the leaven 
of hypocrisy, the ministration of death. The Messianic idea is in- 
spiration itself. As a truth, it is the key to all other religious truth ; 
as the central fact of Christianity, it is the illumination of all it 
teaches or contains. Paul knew the meaning of Messiahship, and was 
anxious that it should prevail. In breaking with Judaism, therefore, 
he severed a vital relation. In preferring Christ to Moses, he es- 
chewed the formal type of religion for a life-saving system; he 
abandoned ceremonies for truths, and a dull faith for a triumphant 
experience ; he emerged from darkness into light. The primary idea 
of the Pauline theology is Messiahship, with its cognate truths. 

In his religious advances he found it also necessary to break 
with Gentilism, or with its organic religious systems, which, unlike 
Judaism, were not fulfilled in Christianity. The conflict, therefore, 
was not a conflict of interpretation, but a conflict for mastery involv- 
ing the destruction of the one and the vindication of the other. It 
involved not the oppositions of truths, so-called, but the opposition 
of truth and error. It meant the surrender of the one to the other. 
Paganism, with its organic systems, its effete ideas, its forlorn hope, 
confronted the apostle everywhere, and stubbornly and irrationally 
disputed the truth he proclaimed. He must needs introduce new 
ideas into the public thought of the Gentile world, and compare the 
old worn-out systems of religion with that of the Son of God. New 
ideas must demolish old ideas ; a new system of truths must entirely 
subvert the old systems of error. The antagonism is direct, because 
the difference is immeasurable. Long before Paul preached the ser- 
mon in Antioch of Pisidia, he had revealed in divers places the subject- 
matter of Christianity, as. a system of truth ; but as this discourse is 
quite fully reported, it may be quoted, along with others, as reflect- 
ing the Pauline conception of Christianity in its relation to the Gen- 
tile world. In addition to the positive affirmation of the Messiahship 



384 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

of Christ, supported by indisputable proofs, Paul distinctly enounces 
and logically elaborates the doctrine of justification by faith and the 
forgiveness of sins, founded on the atonement of the crucified Lord. 
Though the sermon was formally preached to the Jews, many Gen- 
tiles heard it, and before Paul quitted the city he repeated it, or 
amplified the great doctrines to the Gentiles, assuring them of eternal 
life and an equal right to all the provisions of the divine kingdom 
if they only believed in Christ. Here is an advance in theology. 
In the conflict with Judaism Paul brings prominently into view the 
Messiahship of Christ ; in the conflict with paganism he brings for- 
ward the doctrines of atonement, justification, forgiveness, just what 
no Gentile religion had taught or foreshadowed. But these did not 
constitute the sum of Christian doctrines employed by Paul in con- 
flict with and for the overthrow of the Gentile spirit. ' At Lystra, in 
particular, he discusses theistic truth as if it were all-important, and 
yet secondary to others. In his various epistles other doctrines are 
emphasized, such as man's helplessness or sinfulness, spiritual freedom or 
deliverance in Christ, repentance toward God, the available efficacy of 
prayer, the leadership of the Spirit, the resurrection of tlie dead, the judg- 
ment-seat of Christ or human responsibility, the immortality of the soul, 
and eternal rewards and retributions. All these are prominent, not in 
any one epistle, because neither the Gentile nor Jewish Christians 
needed instruction in every thing, but according as a Church or 
people were unenlightened along these lines, or were in dispute over 
these doctrines, Paul wrote and preached. The Messiahship of Christ 
is the center to which Paul ever points the Jew ; but the other doc- 
trines constitute the circumference of religious truth, which he exposes 
to the view of the Gentile world. This is enlargement, this is prog- 
ress, both for Christianity and the world. 

Another conflict awaited Christianity, for which it seemed quite as 
well prepared as for those through which it had passed. Judaism was 
firm and self-reliant, because it was in a sense supernatural ; Gentilism 
was pliable, because it was ignorant and weary with itself; but philos- 
ophy was obstinate, because, regarding religions as superstitions, it 
recognized no special merit in Christianity, and attempted to ridicule 
it out of existence when its babbling defenders first announced it. 
In Macedonia, Epicureanism, gone to seed in Atheism, disputed the 
great doctrines of the resurrection and the judgment ; in Rome Sto- 
icism, pretentious in its love of virtue, co-operated not with Chris- 
tianity in the suppression of crime or the moral education of the peo- 
ple. With both systems of philosophy, or with the cultured classes 
throughout the Roman Empire, Paul came in contact, and was required 
to defend his religion, not by an appeal to prophecy, as was his wont 



CONFLICT WITH PHILOSOPHY. 385 

among the Jews, nor by showing the worthlessness of prevailing relig- 
ions and the adequacy of the new religion, as he did to the Gentiles, 
but by a rational exposition of the truth, and a demonstration of the 
facts on which his religion rested. Logic, not prophecy ; facts, not 
traditions ; truths, not beliefs, are wanted in a strife with culture. 
For such a conflict Paul was prepared; for he was familiar with the 
philosophical thought of the times, and was the man to preach to 
Epicureans, Stoics, Platonists, or others wherever he found them. The 
philosophical method, no less than philosophical thought, influenced 
Paul not a little, the. traces of which are on exhibition in his Epistle 
to the Hebrews, and in that wonderful sermon he preached at Athens. 
The influence of Alexandrian philosophy on Paul, Canon Farrar fully 
concedes ; the influence of, or acquaintance with, Grecian and Roman 
systems of thought, is quite as apparent. 

In this conflict with philosophy, what is the instrument that Paul 
handles the most skillfully ? what is the idea with which he pushes 
his way into the cultured thought of the East? It is not Messiahism; 
it it not atonement and justification through Jesus Christ ; it is mono- 
theism first, but finally it is the great doctrine of the resurrection of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. To the Corinthians, Athenians, and others tinc- 
tured with philosophic wisdom, he expatiates more on these two truths 
than on any other ; he is as strong as Moses in the defense of the 
theistic notion ; but, as the Christian religion rests on another idea, 
he gives less attention to the one than to the other. In the presence 
of the philosophers of Athens, he dwells at length upon the doctrine 
of the resurrection as fundamental, and insists at all times that Chris- 
tianity stands or falls as this doctrine is true or false. Messiahship 
is a prophetical question — hence, talk to the Jews on that line; 
atonement is a religious question — hence, talk to the Gentiles about 
it ; resurrection is a legal question, a philosophical question, a ques- 
tion of facts, arguments, logic — hence, talk to the philosophers about 
it. Messiahship is a Jewish question; justification is a Gentile ques- 
tion ; resurrection is a philosophical question. In this order Paul's 
ideas grew, were revealed, and developed, the first gradually losing 
its importance in the practical value of the second, and the second 
being valuable only as the third had final demonstration. The initial 
truth of Christianity is Messmfiship, but the basal truth is Resurrection. 
From its introductory phases Paul rapidly passed to its fundamental 
excellences, as separating from the Jews he mingled with the Gen- 
tiles, and discovered the relation of the doctrine of the resurrection 
to final triumph. 

Nature's kingdoms or systems, however complex in their develop- 
ment and extensive in their variety, seem to rest upon single truths 

25 



386 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

or simple facts. Far-reaching, mysterious complexity is but the evo- 
lution of a, perhaps, not distant original simplicity. As in California, 
the Sequoia gigantea, or mammoth tree, springs from a seed no larger 
than the mustard, so nature everywhere unfolds from small to great, 
exhibiting in its ever-varying modes of life, and in its transfigured 
expressions of beauty, the existence of a single purpose, and in its 
myriad-typed phenomena illustrates well the simplicity of its begin- 
nings. With all its endless manifestations of form and growth, 
chemistry declares that the conspicuous element of nature, found in 
every thing and vitalizing every thing is oxygen; or, following Mr. 
Huxley, we should be compelled to say that the base of nature is 
protoplasm, thus reducing the universe in its last analysis to a single 
germ. Botany's sign-manual is a leaf; the index of geology is a 
grain of sand ; of astronomy, a fixed star. 

In like manner, the base of the highest religion known to man is 
a single but sublime truth. Notwithstanding the truths of religion, 
embracing as they do the mysterious problems of the Infinite, relat- 
ing to all things past, present, and future, and including all the per- 
manent necessities and strange possibilities of the human soul, are 
many, and glisten with celestial light, and are sources of comfort 
and inspiration to the sons of men ; yet faith in them is dependent 
upon a prior faith in one truth which underlies the whole system of 
religion. 

So Paul instructs us in these words that "if Christ be not raised, 
your faith is vain ;" that is, that the resurrection of our Lord is the 
ground-work of all Christian faith ; that while other truths are radiant 
as the stars, all-quickening and all-inspiring as the angels, possessing 
an acknowledged loftiness of grandeur, they rise and fall with one 
truth, and their destiny, their future power as truths, depends upon 
the glory of the resurrection. 

At Baalbec, Syria, the traveler will observe the ruined Temple of the 
Sun, once a structure of granite and marble, the mystery of masonry 
and architecture, still a lesson-teacher in its dilapidation, still artist- 
ically beautiful in its fragments, and reflecting perfectly the strength 
and design of its ancient builders. In defiance of Time's cruel touch, 
six noble columns, majestic in form, heroic in purpose, bearing the 
marks of antiquity, dare to stand. The temple would have been in- 
complete without them; but, though necessary, they are not the 
foundation. Resting upon these broad-shouldered columns are capi- 
tals, massive, ornamental, essential to the grandeur of the pagan 
temple ; but they are not the foundation. A part of the wall, too, 
remains, consisting of stones so immense in size that the moderns are 
puzzled to know how they were elevated to their places; but the 



PILLARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 387 

walls and these stones in them, resisting all attempts at destruction, 
are not the foundation. Columns, cornices, walls, all essential to the 
beauty, dignity, and streugth of the temple, and yet all dependent 
upon the solid, unseen, well-proportioned masonry under ground. 

So the temple of religion, consisting of doctrinal walls, buttresses, 
columns, friezes, and niches, rests upon the all-supporting foundation 
of one underground truth. 

Let us contemplate this one truth from this stand-point — the 
stand-point of Scripture. The resurrection of our Lord furnishes ad- 
equate proof and sufficient support of a religion professedly divine. 
To a philosopher or theologian a blade of grass may demonstrate the 
existence of a Creator ; but to each a planet, in the regularity of its 
motions and the solidity of its framework, is a more definite demon- 
stration of his existence. So, while there are other truths that have 
convincing power, and are really the available and working facts and 
hypotheses of Christianity, this one truth is the granite rock beneath 
all, and the inspiration of all. An examination of, or an inquiry into, 
other truths, as to their sustaining or weight-bearing influence, will 
satisfy this Pauline conclusion. 

Is not prophecy a pillar of Christianity? It is. Does it not 
demonstrate the inspirational character of revealed religion ? It does. 
Daniel in Babylon and John on Patmos, with prescient sense opened, 
give us the keys to the world's greatest movements, from before the 
appearance of a Redeemer to the end of time, unqualifiedly proving 
their familiarity with the purposes of the divine wisdom. On such 
a rock as prophetic truth, surely Christianity can establish itself, chal- 
lenging all opposition. Prophecy is a pillar, but not the foundation, 
of the temple. Jesus himself frequently assumed a prophet's role, 
delivering his teachings in prophetic forms; but the fate of religion 
and the faith of Christendom do not rest upon prophetic truth in 
general, nor in particular, except on that one which Christ uttered in 
reference to his resurrection. 

We pass, then, to miracles, the splendid attestation of divine 
power, the scintillations of the divine enthusiasm in manifold forms 
of beauty and benevolence. He that by a word quelled stormy Gali- 
lee ; he that gave sight to blind Bartimeus ; he that spoke Lazarus 
back into life, — must be the Son of God ; and surely Christianity 
may quietly repose upon these tremendous facts and awe-inspiring 
events of the Master's life. We can not, nor would we if we could, 
underrate the value, or misunderstand the motive, in the use of 
miraculous power on the part of Christ, for it is confessedly super- 
natural; and, besides, the Savior himself referred to his works as the 
conclusive evidence that his Messiahship was not an unwarranted 



388 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

assumption. Yet upon no miracle of his miraculous life, save the last, 
does the fate of Christianity turn. Not to the blasted fig-tree on 
Olivet ; nor to Nain, where the widow's son was raised ; nor to Gadara, 
where the demon-possessed man was set free, — do the finger-boards of 
the Gospel point us, but, as Paul shouts, to the sepulcher! 

The incarnation of Jesus is the initial mystery of the New Testa- 
ment, appealing to faith's mysterious recognition. The birth of our 
Lord, heralded by angel's song, is indeed a startling event, essential 
to all that followed. " God manifest in the flesh" — this, says the 
searching mind, is the basis of all belief. No, even this initial fact 
of the Gospel becomes a worthless and transparent myth, without 
persuasive power, unless the alleged resurrection was a literal achieve- 
ment. The fate of religion, according to Paul, lies not in its origin, 
but in its end; not in incarnation, even as a proven fact, but in 
resurrection as its terminal glory, as a Joppa orange-tree is tested, 
not by its flourishing roots, but by its oranges. The manger of Jesus 
is nothing to the world if his grave is not empty on the third day. 

What a marvelous scene is that at the Jordan! Hastening from 
Galilee, the Master receives baptism at the hands of the weird 
preacher of the wilderness, the Father speaking approval as by a 
voice in the over-hanging cloud; the divine Spirit alighting in the 
form of a dove upon the Master's head ; and the Son of God is thus 
glorified in the sight of men. In that baptismal scene the Trinity 
appears on exhibition, a pantomimic type made visible. On this 
scenic truth, potent with affirmation, may religion securely stay itself; 
this is foundation enough. "No! no!" says Paul, and he points to 
the sepulcher, saying, "If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain." 

See the Son of man in fierce struggle with the world's Adversary 
on the rugged heights of Mount Quarantania, the conqueror of the 
first Adam striking death-filled blows upon the head of the second. 
How heroic the Master! How patient; how submissive! In the 
end, how defeated the foe! How paralyzed is Satan! Surely Chris- 
tianity will plant itself upon this matchless victory, proclaiming the 
sinless character, the perfect humanity, of Jesus as the corner-stone 
of all truth, the key to his godhead. Go to that sepulcher first, 
says Paul. 

But we will gather at the foot of Hermon, catch a glimpse of the 
transfigured face of the Carpenter's Son, listen to the echoing words 
of Moses and Elias, and then say: Religion has its foundation in 
supernatural things. Hermon is its source. Again, the apostle 
brings us back to the sepulcher, where glows a light and shines a 
glory eclipsing that of Hermon. 

We have found the indestructible support of the Christian religion, 



THE SEPULCHER! THE SEPULCHER! 389 

suggest others, in the martyrdom of Christ's friends and followers, in 
the pitiless death of John the Baptist, in the crushed but crowned 
life of Stephen, and in the decapitation of Paul himself. Martyrdom, 
furnishing a bloody page in the world's history, is considered a glorious 
and almost irrefutable testimony to Gospel truth ; but it must be re- 
membered that error has had its martyrs, and, besides, martyrdom has 
this weakness, that it is the testimony of the martyr to what he 
believes is true, not necessarily to what is true. 

Martyrdom is the expression of one's faith, not necessarily the cer- 
tificate of truth. But, if the martyrdom of Christ's followers is an 
unsatisfactory foundation, it may be supposed, and it has been 
affirmed, that the self-sacrifice of Jesus is all that could be desired for 
a basis of religion. . And did not Paul himself write: *■'■ But God for- 
bid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ?" 
What glory! what power! what redemption is symbolized by the 
cross! No tragedy so mournful, so pathetic; no death so heroic, so 
sublime. Religion without Calvary is religion without redemption. 
Is this not, then, the one truth necessary to religion? We answer by 
an illustration. The river Jordan rises, according to one writer, at 
Dan ; according to another, its fountain-head is at Csesarea Philippi. 
The first writer intends to be correct ; the second writer is correct. 
The two sources are only four miles apart, the fountain at Dan being 
supplied by water from the mountain spring at Csesarea Philippi. 
So Calvary and the sepulcher are within sight of each other, and are 
equally related, and it is not surprising that one Christian will shout 
the praise of Calvary as Salvation's source, while another, going back 
of it, piloted by the apostle, will discover that the fountain-head of 
power and glory is the abandoned sepulcher — in other words, the fact 
of the Lord's resurrection. 

Let us stand a moment on the southern shoulder of the Mount of 
Olives ; let us hear Jesus' last earth-words ; let us behold him as he 
spreads his open palms in blessing ; listen, and we shall hear angel 
wings, and soon see the beatific forms of angels themselves ; look, and 
we shall witness a descending and an ascending cloud, bearing away 
the deathless body of our Lord. Event unrivaled ! Pageantry un- 
eclipsed by that of Elijah's ascension ! Here on Olivet's heavenly 
brow, where the prismatic colors of eternity are playing, will we lay 
the foundation of our faith. No! No! No! shouts Paul; the sepul- 
cher! the sepulcher! "If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain;" 
your faith in all the occurrences, teachings, life, and death of Christ 
is vain, a self-deceiving hope, a misery-producing thought, unless he 
vacated the tomb on the third day. 

So not in any event in that manifold and exceptional life; not in 



390 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

his birth ; not in his baptism or temptation ; not in his transfiguration 
or ascension ; not in Calvary's awful fate, — is the corner-stone of our 
religion to be found. These all add beauty and dignity to the temple, 
which is indeed incomplete without them, but these incomparable and 
unapproachable truths are nothing without the one all-supporting fact 
of the resurrection. 

In keeping with the preceding thought, it is clear to all that the 
resurrection of the Lord must be viewed as the final proof of his 
mission and religion. In the inspired records, we reach a limit to 
almost every proceeding, human and divine ; we view the last act in 
the drama of history, prophecy, creation, and redemption. With the 
creation of man, the creative work of the Almighty ceases; with the 
destruction of the first-born in Egypt, the miracles of Moses before 
Pharaoh are suspended. In these and like events in Scripture, the 
last act is the greatest, the highest water-mark of power and wisdom 
is reached. So in the establishment of Christianity in the work and 
person of Jesus Christ, the last miracle is the greatest ; the last pic- 
ture is the most beautiful ; the last event is all-powerful and highest. 
Not even the ascension, though glorious enough, had any such glory, 
any such demonstrative excellence and power, as the resurrection. 
Other events, other miracles, are efficient in the line of evidences ; but, 
adopting a word of Joseph Cook, the resurrection is sufficient. 
Hermon is efficient in its display of celestial beams; the resurrection 
is sufficient as an output of upper-world glory. The baptism is efficient 
as a temporary approval from God ; the resurrection is Christ's ever- 
lasting vindication before man. Calvary is efficient as an atonement; 
the resurrection sufficient for all there is of religion. 

Paul's ideas are not indistinct or unknown. In the attempt to 
catalogue them we have been impressed with the range of his 
thought, which is as wide as the Gospel itself, embracing all the 
idiomatic truths of the new religion. No sacred writer equals him in 
the completeness of his revelations. The synoptists are narrators, 
not expositors or interpreters. They construct nothing, they add 
nothing to what they know or have heard. They are reporters, ex- 
pressing no opinion of sayings or doings. In his gospel, John breaks 
away from this historical position, and utters as profound thought as 
ever Paul entertained, but he shrinks from a venture into mysteries 
so soon as he discovers his inability to grasp them. In the Apocalypse 
he is favored with visions of the future, by which he is distinguished 
from Paul, who was not a seer, or vision-monger, but a dealer in facts 
and the foundation-truths of the new kingdom of God. Paul sees 
truths, not visions. He is intensely individual in this truth-telling, 
system-building task, turning all the currents of his thinking into 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE APOSTLE. 391 

divine channels, and standing for truth against the world. Appointed 
as the truth-teller, he thunders it until the stars quake, and flashes it 
until its light fairly consumes the errors of opposing systems. He 
roams in the fields of revelation, gathering up all that has been 
spoken, studying all that has been written, seeking for all that has 
been withheld, and communicating all to mankind, from Caesar's 
household to the mobs of Lystra and Ephesus. In the exegesis of 
divine wisdom he addresses the individual, as in letters to Timothy and 
Philemon, and the Churches, as in the Epistles to the Thessalouians 
and Philippians ; in discourses, as in that before Agrippa and on the 
staircase in the tower of Antonia ; in conversations, as in that on the 
wrecked ship and with the brethren at the Three Taverns ; in songs, 
as in the jail at Philippi ; and in prayers, as he bids adieu to the 
disciples at Ephesus. Addressing all classes, and speaking on all 
occasions, he applied truth as it was needed, always prescribing it in 
the old form if adapted to existing conditions, or submitting it in an 
entirely new way, which either provoked inquiry, aroused antagonism, 
or issued in repentance and reformation. No subject related to his 
mission, whether philosophical, ethical, moral, social, or religious, 
escaped his hand, but was developed with a surprising boldness, and 
enforced with the authority of a teacher from God. It was God's 
truth, not man's, as it fell from his lips or dropped from his pen ; it 
was God's business of which he was the representative ; hence the 
fullness of his revelations, the equipoise of his purposes, the consum- 
mate skill of his applied logic, the transparency of his courage, the 
steadfastness of his faith, and the tragic tone of his life. 

Hence the career of Paul, both as a teacher and a missionary, 
a brief survey of which can not be avoided. The converted Pharisee 
was not a dreamer, a sentimentalist, a mystic ; his religion was not 
the religion of the beautiful, or the religion of the reason, but the 
product of supernatural influence in his soul. It was fire, of which 
enthusiasm, tremendous activity, and heroic achievement were the 
outward signs. Religion is not alone introspective, it has external 
relations ; it is a religion of service, of doing, of conquest. Paul was 
not, could not be, a silent force, a neutral disciple, a negative Chris- 
tian. He was positive, self-assertive, and armed with the despotic 
power of truth. Naturally a man of energy, of which his career as a 
Pharisee is proof, when he espoused the Christian movement he gave 
to it all his possibilities, augmenting himself by the supernatural en- 
dowments suddenly conferred, and became a conspicuous leader and 
the chief apostle in the early Church. Not often do the logical and 
the emotional faculties cohere or unite in a single mind ; but in Paul 
they happily combined, so that it is a question which was the stronger, 



392 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the keen, logical faculty, which enabled him to answer all opposers 
and extinguish all errors, or that pathetic and energetic spirit which 
often terminated in the holiest courage, and at times resistlessly bore 
him on to the destiued result. If, as the author of "Ecce Homo" 
intimates, enthusiasm is the key-note to the life of Christ, certainly it 
is the undertone of Paul's vivid and successful career for Christ ; for 
so great was his passion for man that, as he spoke, the idols on the 
Acropolis trembled, and Felix's and Nero's household were made to 
pause and consider. Such results are not the proofs of eloquence or 
genius, but the signs of an inspired enthusiasm, which the face of 
kings could not repress, nor the mobs of Jews at all silence or 
overcome. 

The apostolate of Paul was to the Gentile world. Not refusing 
to declare the new Gospel to his countrymen, but the rather anxious 
that they might be saved, he nevertheless was commissioned as the 
apostle to the Gentiles, differing in this respect from the original 
apostles, w T ho, except Peter, were limited in their labors, until Paul's 
proclamation of independence, to the "cities of Israel." It required 
not a little logic to convince the apostolical college that the grace of 
life in Jesus Christ should henceforth be offered to all men ; and, 
had it not been for the logic of events, it is almost certain that the 
logic of truth had not then prevailed. Peter was for a season the rep- 
resentative of the new idea, but was superseded by Paul, who cham- 
pioned a "liberal Christianity," and discerned the greatness of the 
redemptive idea in its relation to the race. Paul's enlarged Christian 
idea produced a momentary convulsion throughout the Church ; it 
was the rending of the veil again; it was tearing it into pieces. But 
this idea of the world's emancipation was Christ's idea, which the 
Church but dimly understood. Revealed to Paul, he must declare 
it; he can not be narrow or exclusive; and, while willing to recog- 
nize the authority of the brethren at Jerusalem, he would have broken, 
with them and gone his way as an independent apostle, had the di- 
vine programme been curtailed or the powers of his commission been 
abridged. The world shall have the Gospel. 

Henceforth he bears a world-wide Gospel to a sin-weary race. He 
is an evangelist of the highest type. He is not a settled pastor, but 
an itinerant, by the terms of his commission, traveling from country 
to country, entering new provinces and old cities, planting Churches 
everywhere, and organizing Christian communities throughout the 
vast Roman empire. He was a trained organizer ; he was methodical 
in his pursuits, knowing how to divide his time, appropriate agencies, 
and accomplish tasks not possible to one of less regularity and habit. 
He -was qualified to superintend the largest missionary operations, 



ANTIOCH A MISSIONARY CENTER. 393 

and upon no one could the "care of all the Churches" have rested 
so safely as upon him. His vision was open to the most distant 
fields, and his resources seemed equal to all emergencies. Other 
apostles labored and died in foreign countries for the faith, but the 
missionary journeys of Paul eclipse the united efforts of the twelve. 

For an account of the missionary work of the apostle we are 
obliged to depend upon "The Acts of the Apostles," as recorded by 
Luke, which Renan appropriately designates the "second idyl of 
Christianity," the first being "furnished" by the "Lake of Tiberias 
and its fishing barks." In the time of James, or before the dispersion 
of the apostles, Jerusalem was the capital of Christianity; but as 
Paul rose to supremacy Antioch in Syria virtually became the head- 
quarters of the Christian Church, or, as Farrar says, the "second 
capital of Christianity." Not that Jerusalem was abandoned by Paul, 
for he visited it no less than five different times, but, as a historic 
fact, it lost its prestige as a Christian center, and divided its impor- 
tance with other cities. Jewish Christianity recognized Jerusalem as 
its center ; Gentile Christianity, drifting away from Jewish influence, 
centered itself first at Antioch, where the Christians received their 
name, and later at Ephesus, as Antioch declined. 

Antioch is the misssonary center, the birthplace of the missionary 
enterprise, of the early Christian Church. From the Syrian City, as 
Renan observes, Christianity "launches out into the wide world," in- 
stinct with a purpose to conquer the race and mold it after its like- 
ness. Two men, Paul and Barnabas, after much prayer, initiate the 
task ; for, bidding adieu to the disciples, they start westward, trusting 
only in Him who commanded them to go. Renan does not ridicule 
the small beginning, but credits these men with sincerity, and ac- 
knowledges a solemnity of ideal in their lives, however much he may 
doubt the success of the movement they have inaugurated. Tracing 
them in their voyages and travels, he affirms that they followed the 
"road of Jewish emigration;" but this is only partly true, for in Asia 
Minor they traveled often where there were no roads, and among 
cities without inter-relations or communication. Paul was an original 
missionary, not building on other men's labors, but organizing new 
movements, and going where he had not been preceded by religious 
teachers. 

In this apparently wandering but providential life he usually trav- 
eled on foot, supporting himself by the labor of his hands, especially 
by the trade he had learned when a youth, and was not dependent 
on Churches or communities. This gave him influence, for he could 
not be accused of mercenary motives in the preaching of the Gospel. 

The first missionary tour, consuming about one year and a half, 



394 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

was largely confined to the cities of Asia Minor, in which Churches 
were organized, and the breach between Judaism and Gentile Chris- 
tianity was greatly widened. From Antioch they proceeded to the 
island of Cyprus, where, after preaching in the cities of Salamis and 
Paphos, they embarked for Perga, and without delay hastened to An- 
tioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, meeting with fierce 
opposition at every point, except at Derbe, from which they returned 
to Antioch in Syria. 

The significance of the tour is not in the results achieved. These 
were small enough, and secured at the hazard of life. Paul's work 
was introductory ; it was a trial, not of himself, but of Christianity 
in contact both with the Judaic and Gentile spirit. He felt his way 
into the conflict, and came out satisfied, though he had been stoned 
nearly to death at Lystra. Commissioned to the Gentiles, he 
preached at first in these cities to the Jews, in order to convince them 
that Jesus is the Messiah ; but, arriving at Antioch in Pisidia, he 
threw of the mask, and, as the Apostle to the Gentiles, assured them 
of the same Gospel privileges he had offered the Jews, and urged 
them to unite in Church fellowship, and accept Jesus as their Savior. 
He did not condemn the Jews, but he had reached the point when he 
was no longer under obligation to preach to them, or neglect the Gen- 
tiles in their behalf; henceforth, we shall see and hear him as a 
Gentile preacher. His personal separation from the Jews was re- 
ligious, and not on ethnic or national grounds, and this separation 
was a marked product of this missionary tour. 

More striking still was the actual opening of the Gospel to the 
Gentile world. The intermittent efforts of Peter must be recognized 
as providential indications of a purpose to confer upon foreign na- 
tions the Gospel rights which were supposed primarily to belong to 
the Jews; but under Paul that purpose steadily and rapidly evolved 
into actual results, and finally became the great aim of the Apostolic 
Church. As the Master had said, "The first shall be last, and the 
last first," meaning that the Jew should hear the Gospel first, and the 
Gentiles last, but that the Gentiles would receive it first and the Jew 
last, the time had come for the fulfillment of the statement. In 
Christ's time the Jew was treated as the heir of the kingdom of God ; 
in Paul's time the Gentile was promoted to the same heirship, and 
entered upon the Gospel inheritance, and, as a consequence, the 
Churches that were organized were Gentile Churches, and the leaven- 
ing power of the Gospel spread more and more throughout the Gen- 
tile world. The actual Gentile movement toward Christ begins after 
Paul strikes the shores of Asia Minor, the Jew receding in importance 
with the progress of the tour, and finally disappearing altogether. 



PAUVS SECOND MISSIONARY TOUR. 395 

Perhaps the turning to the Gentiles was the exasperating cause of 
Jewish hatred to Paul. His conversion, his declaration of Christ as 
the Messiah, and his renunciation of Judaism was interpreted in no 
friendly spirit iu Jewish circles ; but that he should aim to undermine 
Judaism and install Christianity as the religion of all mankind, in- 
viting all nations to the enjoyment of the same divine rights, was an 
offense tenfold more aggravating, and whetted to intensity all that 
hostility that broke out against him in his work of religious propa- 
gandism. But as the Gentile world was larger than the Jewish world, 
so the Gospel economy was better than the Jewish economy, and 
Paul dared every thing in publishing it, first to the Jews, and then 
to the Gentiles. 

Five years intervene between the first and the second tours of Paul. 
Leaving Antioch, he proceeds by the shortest route to Derbe, begin- 
ning the second tour where he closed the first, as if it were his inten- 
tion to carry forward the work from that point eastward until he had 
explored the whole country, and proclaimed the Gospel in every city. 
But as his " goings" were under the superintendence of the Holy 
Spirit, he soon found that effectual doors were opened to him in other 
and entirely new fields, and that he must be ready to enter them. 
From Derbe he revisits Lystra, and then plunges into Galatia, a 
province inhabited by a wild and superstitious people, to whom he dis- 
courses of Christ, and whose hearts he wins, and then hurries to Troas 
on the western coast. A new programme is now suggested to his 
thought. He is impressed that he must introduce the Gospel into Eu- 
rope ; Gentile Christianity exercises its controlling influence upon him ; 
and so he sails as the first Gospel message-bearer to the continent of 
Europe. Now he is at Neopolis ; then at Philippi ; anon we find him 
in Thessalonica ; suddenly he turns his steps to Athens; and for two 
years Corinth listens to the religious zealot, quite as much impressed 
by his eloquence as astonished at his doctrine. The tour is completed 
by a stop at Ephesus and a direct journey to Jerusalem. 

In its extent, and in the character of the work performed, the 
second tour was even more remarkable than the first. Hitherto 
the Gospel herald had confined his ministry to Asia; now Europe 
seemed as anxious to hear the divine message and greeted the apostles, 
not with stones, but with arguments and more apparent consideration. 
In this respect Europe was a more promising field than Asia, and 
Paul's report of labor in the Macedonian cities was doubtless as 
thrilling as it was encouraging, and the results were as stimulating 
as they were providential. Greece and the south-east quarter of Eu- 
rope were renowned for art and culture. Philosophy still dominated 
the public thought, and statues still graced the temples and adorned 



396 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the palaces of their chief cities. Asia Minor obstructed the apos- 
tle's progress with Jewish prejudices and pagan vices; Southern Eu- 
rope offered the resistance of culture to Christianity. Paul is on Plato's 
ground at last, and must contend with him. At Lystra stones ; at Eph- 
esus beasts; at Athens philosophers. In Antioch Christianity con- 
tested with pagan religions ; in Damascus and Jerusalem with Juda- 
ism ; in Asia Minor with pagan corruption ; in Europe with scholastic 
thought. These contests were necessary to exhibit the nature of Chris- 
tianity and indicate its claims. 

What was the result of the European tour? In Philippi a jail, 
but finally a Church ; in Thessalonica and Corinth large Christian 
Churches; in Athens confusion among the philosophers and the 
conversion of a number of people. Mars' Hill is more famous than 
Plato's Academy. The latter has disappeared; the former, a huge 
rock, with its chiseled steps, still remains. Its situation is remark- 
able, and afforded Paul a splendid opportunity, which he improved, 
for pointing out the errors of philosophy and explaining and defend- 
ing the great truths of Christianity. To the right of Mars' Hill 
rises the Acropolis, on which the Parthenon and other temples dedi- 
cated to gods and goddesses were standing and still exist in a ruined 
state; to the left is the Pnyx, where Demosthenes thundered his 
philippics, and where the multitudes grew patriotic ; in the rear- is 
the market-place; in front, and at his feet, was the city of Athens, 
containing perhaps one-half million of people. Not far away is the 
temple of Theseus ; beyond is the old cemetery ; and one mile to the 
north is Plato's Academy. 

This was Paul's environment in Athens, amid which he pronounced 
the sermon that made him famous as the apologist of Christianity, 
and to which Athens never replied. Idolatry and philosophy were 
vanquished on Mars' Hill. Athens did not respond with stones, as 
did Asia Minor ; nor with a jail, as did Philippi ; nor with beasts, as 
did Ephesus ; nor with arrests, as did Jerusalem ; but with intellectual 
vanity and a promise of investigation. Philosophy is investigation. 
Asia persecutes the Gospel ; Europe investigates. In these behold the 
Asia and Europe of to-day ! 

Paul's third and final missionary tour is made from Antioch, 
rather for the purpose of confirming his work than of extending it. 
He visits Asia Minor and the Churches in Europe, explaining 
doctrines and mysteries, instituting forms of discipline or Church 
order, settling theological differences between Jews and Gentiles, and 
organizing Christian communities into active forces for the propaga- 
tion of the Gospel. New Churches spring up in his path, and new 
cities are visited and instructed in the Gospel, but his principal 



PAUL'S APPEAL TO CAESAR. 397 

work seems to be supervision, establishment, organization, centraliza- 
tion, and indoctrination. In this sphere of labor he was not less 
active or less successful than when engaged in the more aggressive 
conflicts with the opposition to the Gospel. He now appears as the 
administrator, the Church parliamentarian, the episcopal head of 
Christendom, responsible only to Jesus Christ, and yet concedes the 
nominal authority of the original Church. In this tour, of which 
the central point is Ephesus, where he remains three years, he seems 
to have gathered up the fragments, reduced disorderly and ignorant 
societies to subjection, instructed them in doctrine, usages, and duties, 
and crystallized the Christian spirit within the confines of two conti- 
nents. As distinguished from the other tours, the chief products of 
this last missionary journey are Church order and Church life. 

On to Jerusalem to observe the feast of Pentecost is Paul's next 
ambition, and thitherward he tarries at Troas, Miletus, Tyre, Ptole- 
mais, and Csesarea, listening in Philip's home to the ominous prophecy 
of Agabus respecting what should befall him at Jerusalem, but with- 
out discouragement he proceeded and arrived in the Holy City in 
time for the great celebration. 

Another journey is before Paul. It is a missionary tour also, but 
unlike the others, it is a journey to death ; he rides on his coffin 
from Jerusalem to Home — a victor nevertheless. Mobbed by blood- 
thirsty Jews, arrested at the instance of the high-priest, and hurried to 
the fortress of Antonia, it seems that the end has suddenly come ; but 
he has a chance or two for his life. He is tried before the Sanhedrim, 
more as a heretic and blasphemer than a violator of civil law, 
and, just when sentence might have been pronounced upon him, he 
providentially divides the legal body, bringing the Pharisees to his 
defense and rescue. Forty men, infuriated by the result, bind 
themselves with an oath to kill Paul ; but this plan is circumvented 
by the Roman officer, who immediately arranges for the transfer of 
his prisoner to Csesarea. Here he is tried before Felix who reserves 
judgment ; and Festus, his official successor, delays a settlement, which 
leads Paul to appeal to Caesar, which is the determining point in this 
crisis. To Rome he must therefore go. During the voyage he is 
shipwrecked at Malta ; but this is only an incidental obstruction, 
perilous at the time, but in no wise a fatal hindrance. On he goes, 
and at last arrives in the " Eternal City." From the " Holy City to 
the Eternal City!" One step more, and the "Celestial City" will 
open its gates to the hero. 

Paul's imprisonment in Rome; the law's strange delay in his case; 
the time improved in preaching to both Jews and Gentiles ; his sup- 
posed acquittal on legal grounds ; his hasty journey to Macedonia and 



398 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Asia Minor again ; his more rapid visit to Spain ; his re-arrest and 
return to Rome ; the death sentence passed upon him and its bloody 
execution just outside the city, — are matters not historically estab- 
lished, but the probabilities are that these events occurred. Curiosity 
would be satisfied if the missing pages in the biography of so illustri- 
ous a toiler could be found ; but the incomplete record, as we have it, 
is the key to a very complete life, which, after all, is the important 
point to be remembered. 

Our preparation for an estimate of Paul in the varied aspects of 
his character and life, as a thinker, a writer, a worker, a martyr, an 
example, and an influence, is sufficiently extended to justify an im- 
mediate attempt in that direction. 

It is needless to remind the reader that, on the whole, and not- 
withstanding critical opinion has endeavored to deprive Paul of his 
true historic position, and has either underrated or overrated his re- 
lations to Christianity, the general verdict of the centuries is an 
appreciation of his apostleship and a widening of his fame as the 
hero of God. In eulogy of him Monod pronounces him " the greatest 
benefactor of our race," while Renan discovers only an ordinary man 
in the apostle to the Gentiles. Canon Farrar says that men did not 
" recognize his greatness," nor is it certain that he is yet fully recog- 
nized in his leadership of thought and in his influence in the world. 
The Jew is his vilifier ; the skeptic is his critic ; the philosopher is 
his investigator ; the Churchman is his historian ; the theologian is 
his interpreter ; the Christian is his admirer and believer. 

From these various sources, religions, skepticisms, histories, phi- 
losophies, and theologies, varying opinions and inferences might be 
drawn ; but it is gratifying that the preponderance of testimony is in 
complete harmony with our own opinion that Paul was the greatest 
man that ever lived. 

As a thinker he has been fairly considered in previous paragraphs ; 
but a slight reference to his scholarship, his logical powers, his intel- 
lectual vision, and psychological constitution is imperative at this 
point, since so graceful a writer as Renan has impeached his intel- 
lectual standing by declaring him " unlearned," unpoetical, as having 
"injured science," and as incapable of becoming a "man of learn- 
ing." This is a criticism born of that general prejudice to Chris- 
tianity which has actuated the French writer in all his assaults upon 
Christian truth, and which blinds him to the recognition of those 
qualities which constituted Paul the marked man of his age and the 
chief apostle of the Church. A Jew might join Renan in depre- 
ciation of Paul, but an honest student of Paul's writings must accord 
him, not only genius, but inspiration, not only acute perception of 



LOGICIAN AND WRITER. 399 

truth, but supernatural knowledge of it. When Kenan asserts that 
Paul's revelations were his own " whims," he means to strike at the 
revelations and at the apostle, implying that the two stand or fall 
together : and they do ; but he is the first critic to reduce truth to a 
whim. The revelations of Paul, deprived of inherent supernaturalism, 
and viewed merely as the original products of his inflamed imagina- 
tion, in which Renan says he was deficient, or of his profoundest psy- 
chologic research, which every epistle establishes, are accepted even in 
rationalistic circles, of which Baur is a leader, as stupendous announce- 
ments and superior to the average discoveries of philosophic thought. 
The theism of Paul ; the doctrine of Messiahship ; the law of Atone- 
ment; the theory of justification; the explanation of sin ; the certainty 
of resurrection ; the penalties and rewards of the Judgment, — are not 
whims, or all the sacred writers were whimsical, and Christ himself 
may be pronounced a whim. Renan might have recognized Paul in 
his intellectual greatness without compromising his final opinion of 
the place he should occupy in history. 

In natural order Paul appears as the writer, different in style or 
rhetoric, as he is different in thought or substance, from all inspired 
penmen. Recalling the fact that he was a truth-teller, one might sup- 
pose that he would employ the historical style, but he was not a 
narrator ; hence the style is not historical. He was not imaginative; 
hence the style is not poetic. He was not seer-like ; hence the style 
is not prophetical or apocalyptic. He deals not with scientific facts, 
except incidentally ; hence the style is not of the schools, or scho- 
lastic. He writes not for sensational effect ; hence the style is not 
oratorical. He writes not to protect any supposed weaknesses in 
Christianity ; hence the style is not sophistical. What is left ? He 
is set for the announcement of truth ; hence the style is declarative ; 
he must explain the truth ; hence the style is didactic ; he must 
defend the truth ; hence the style is logical. Paul's commission was 
to prove, as well as preach, the Gospel. Preaching is proving. Of all 
Bible writers, Paul is the chief logician, importing reason into re- 
ligion and abstracting superstition from it, thereby refuting the 
common suspicion that Christianity is unfriendly to reason. The 
Pauline idea of religion is superlatively rationalistic. Prior to Paul, 
religion is a narration, a history, a catalogue of facts; under Paul, 
religion is logic, order, reason ; in Paul, religion is spiritualized per- 
ception, it is the divine reason. First, historians, reporters; second, 
the logician ; this is the order of the sacred writers. Hence, in Paul's 
fourteen epistles we find arguments for all the truths of the Christian 
religion, and a methodical attack on all the errors of philosophy, 
idolatry, and sin. "The world by wisdom knew not God," is his 



400 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

text against philosophy ; " What agreement hath the temple of God 
with idols?" is his text against idolatry; the "wages of sin is 
death," is his text against sin. In Paul we have an instance of the 
inspiration of reason, while in others there is the inspiration of 
memory, or the inspiration of affection, or courage. Inspired reason 
is superior to academic reason; hence, Paul is superior to Plato. He 
did not dream, or speculate, or inquire ; he knew. This accounts for 
the brevity of the Pauline Epistles, the equal of which no literary 
annals furnish. Logic needs few words, truth fewer. History, poetry, 
science, philosophy, requires a vocabulary. Truth clothes itself in 
monosyllables. Paul is brief, but incisive ; compact, but full ; his 
words, like himself, are short but perpendicular. 

For the preservation, as well as the dissemination, of truth, Paul 
chose the epistolary, as Plato chose the dialogistic, style. "The 
epistolary form," says Canon Farrar, "is eminently spontaneous, 
personal, flexible, emotional." That the apostle took to this form of 
composition because it suited his mental taste, is not clear; but that 
he adopted it because it was the common method of communication, 
and because it admitted of a certain freedom which the scholastic 
style prohibited, seems reasonable enough. Into these "encyclical 
epistles" he pours profoundest convictions, and through them re- 
veals the highest and holiest truths, but always so as to impress the 
heart while he storms the mind, and compels the submission of both 
to the ideal idea he is unfolding. Luther regarded his utterances as 
" living creatures, with hands and feet," which is only another way 
of saying that Paul's words are life-words. 

The authenticity and genuineness of some of the epistles ascribed 
to Paul have been called in question, not by one writer only, but by 
several, as by the critics of the Tubingen school, and by skeptics like 
Renan; and not for one reason only, but for many, among which 
may be noted certain internal deficiencies of style, or incoherency or 
aimlessness of argument, and the external impossibilities of their 
composition at the time and by the apostle. Little general objection 
is made to the Epistles to the Romans, the Corinthians, and the 
Galatians; Hilgenfeld is also willing to accept the First Epistle to 
the Thessalonians, and the Epistles to the Philippians and to Phile- 
mon, holding in doubt all the others ; Renan accepts the Second 
Epistle to the Thessalonians and that to the Colossians ; so that, of 
the fourteen bearing the apostle's signature, even the critics, ration- 
alists, and skeptics concede the Pauline authorship of nine, and resist 
the claims of the others on grounds not at all historically, philosoph- 
ically, or doctrinally sufficient. 

According to Renan, the epistles of the apostle were edited after 



RENAN'S OBJECTIONS TO FIVE EPISTLES. 401 

his execution by unknown hands, and suffered materially in the pro- 
cess, the editors determining what was Pauline and what was not; 
and he declares that they re-arranged the contents of some of the 
epistles, presenting them, not as Paul actually wrote them, but as the 
editors believed he wrote them. He insists that the Epistle to the 
Romans, under such editorial supervision, is objectionable ; but waiv- 
ing the objection, he admits the general authenticity of the epistle. 
The same remark applies to the eight other epistles, whose authen- 
ticity he does not dispute. 

Slight technical objections might be urged against these accepted 
epistles, such as the theory of anti-Christ in the Second Epistle to the 
Thessalonians, and the apparent Gnosticism in the Epistle to the 
Colossians; but Renan does not urge them, because the ingrain 
thoughts of the epistles are Pauline. 

As to the Epistle to the Ephesians, Kenan suspects that it is a 
perverted copy or imitation of the Epistle to the Colossians, since the 
Gnosticism in the one appears in the other ; and he affirms that, as 
it is addressed to converted heathen, it was not designed for the 
Church at Ephesus, which was largely composed of Jewish Christians ; 
but this, in part, is speculation, and can not weigh against the repu- 
tation of the epistle. 

The two Epistles to Timothy, and the one to Titus, Renan pro- 
nounces " apochryphal." They are fabrications, full of "Latinisms" 
and ecclesiasticisms ; the language is not Paul's; the hierarchical 
spirit is not Paul's. 

His chief objection to the Epistle to the Hebrews is, that, while 
traditionally attributed to Paul, and containing, as he admits, Paul's 
ideas, the style is not Paul's, and, therefore, the document must 
be rejected. 

Reduced to briefest statement, the critical opposition of Renan to 
the authenticity of five of Paul's epistles may be expressed by such 
words as editorship, technicality, imitation, fabrication, and rhetoric. 
Editorship does not invalidate authorship — it really implies the genu- 
ineness of the epistles; technicality makes not against any of them, 
since it implies only a speck on the mirror of truth ; imiMion is only 
a confirmation of the original epistle ; fabrication is a serious word, 
but, as applied to three epistles, it is without foundation. Timothy 
and Titus were Paul's disciples in Christ and companions in travel, 
to whom it would be natural to write when separated from them, and 
the "ecclesiastic spirit" of these epistles is in keeping with the 
ministerial relations both these sons in the Gospel sustained to the 
Church. The rhetoric of the Epistle to the Hebrews is its fascination ; 
its philosophic Christianity is an exhibition of the advanced state or 

26 



402 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

knowledge of Paul, which found its fittest expression in Alexandrian 
allegory or hyperbole. None of the objections seems fatal to the 
claim of the Pauline origin of the fourteen epistles. 

Accepting them as genuine, what a writer was Paul! To the 
Romans, he writes like a theologian ; to the Corinthians, he writes 
like an archbishop and a philosopher ; to the Galatians, he writes like 
an earnest teacher; to the Ephesians, he writes like a self-composed 
advocate ; to the Philippians, he writes like a joyous Christian ; to 
the Colossians, he writes like a philosophical Christian ; to the Thessa- 
lonians, he writes like an eschatological Christian ; to Timothy, he 
writes like a father and Church parliamentarian ; to Titus, he writes 
like a beloved pastor; to Philemon, he writes like an affectionate 
brother ; and to the Hebrews, he writes like a scholar and a philoso- 
pher. What variety of style ; what variety of truth ; what variety 
of purpose ; what variety of result ! 

Considering Paul as the worker, he is as remarkable for his devo- 
tion to duty as for the sincerity of his religious convictions, and quite 
as successful in one sphere of labor as another. When the first ray 
of light penetrated his darkened mind, his first inquiry was in rela- 
tion to service, in the words, " What wilt thou have me to do ?" No 
sooner did the scales fall from his eyes in the house of Judas than 
he began to proclaim that Jesus is the Christ, and this principally to 
the Jews in Damascus ; and, until life's tragic close, he was the faith- 
ful and obedient apostle, striving to lay foundations that others might 
build thereon. 

He is the incessant preacher of " Christ and him crucified;" he is 
an itinerant, a Christian traveler, a flaming evangelist, spreading 
the news of the Gospel from continent to continent, and anxious to 
offer life to the isles of the sea. His, as we have observed, was not 
a settled pastorate ; he could not settle. His longest pastorate was at 
Ephesus, rounding out in three full years ; but the city was the head- 
quarters or capital of the Christian Church for Asia Minor and Eu- 
rope, on which account he deemed it advisable to tarry longer there 
than elsewhere. In a certain sense, the Gospel must anchor on the 
shores of time ; but John reveals an angel flying with the Gospel 
through the heavens, and shouting to the earth to hear the message of 
the Lord. Others, like James, may settle in Jerusalem ; but Paul, 
like the angel, will fly from nation to nation to declare the tidings 
of salvation. What religious histories, written and unwritten, are 
embalmed in the words, Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Phil- 
ippi, Athens, and Rome ! These cities represent Paul's life, the Gos- 
pel's conquering march, and are the prophetic land-marks of its tri- 
umph in all the world. Renan intimates that the success of Paul 



PAUL A CHURCH-FOUNDER. 403 

in Asia Minor was largely owing to the religious credulity of the peo- 
ple; but his explanation of success is very like Gibbon's, in that, 
recognizing the effects, the causes are only obscurely or remotely ap- 
prehended. That the .inhabitants of Galatia, in particular, were su- 
perstitious, must be believed ; but not more superstitious, nor more 
wedded to mythological and traditional stories, than the Athenians; 
and yet Galatia received the Gospel, while Athens, on the whole, 
did not. Nor must it be forgotten that it should add to the credit 
of the Gospel, if it can relieve a gross, ignorant people of their dull 
and heartless superstitions; for the philosophic spirit did not pilot 
Athens into liberty therefrom, nor is it in the power of civilization to 
extinguish religious error; but the Gospel rescues a people from re- 
ligious barbarisms, and enlightens them in ethical duties, and saves 
them from sin. Granted that the Gospel will deliver from these 
things, and we shall not trouble ourselves with the skeptic's explana- 
tion. Wanted — facts, not explanations; wanted — effects, not causes. 

Whatever may be said of Paul's work in other directions, he will 
always be recognized as the principal Church-founder of his day. 
Churches were not built, but Christian societies were organized, dis- 
ciplined, and supervised, by the apostle; and his interest in them 
never ceased, for, absent from them, he communicated with them by 
epistles, and, in his third journey, devoted himself specially to confirm 
them in the truth. Again, Renan exhibits his inability to recognize 
the merits of Paul, by declaring that "his Churches were either 
slightly substantial or denied him," and that they soon fell to pieces, 
and their founder was forgotten. Yet the Pauline Churches of Asia 
Minor introduced new elements into Oriental life that have never 
disappeared ; and, because they were established, we have not only 
Paul's epistles, but John's addresses to the " seven Churches of Asia." 
The Churches do not exist, but the epistles they evoked constitute 
the substantial documents of Christianity. The outcome of Paul's 
Church-planting, Kenan seems to forget. Let the Churches go — the 
epistles addressed to them are our inheritance. 

In studying Paul as a worker no allusion has been made to the 
miracles he wrought, or their relation to his mission, for the reason 
that the miracle was an incidental factor in his history, and employed 
only in emergencies. His first miracle, which occurred at Paphos, 
a city of Cyprus, Renan ridicules and rejects, but he rejects all 
miracles. Elymas is stricken blind, and the people are stricken with 
fear, and the Word of God prevails. In Philippi a maniac girl is re- 
lieved of the incurable trouble, and consternation follows ; the people 
believe in God. Paul's equipment for missionary work was not the 
miracle-working power. His equipment was educational and relig- 



404 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ious ; the gift to work a miracle was exceptional, and only occasion- 
ally granted. He could not exercise it at pleasure ; he could not 
cure Epaphroditus of his illness ; he could not extract the thorn 
from his own flesh. He was a poor miracle-worker ; he was not 
called to work miracles, and the few recorded of him arose from 
necessity, and were possible because of immediate supernatural en- 
dowment and immediate divine direction to proceed. Hence, the 
apostle is not presented as a miracle-performer, nor is his career or 
success to be explained on that basis, or by any thing kindred to it. 
He is the spiritually equipped worker, and sufficient for all things. 

Just when Paul assumed the title of "apostle," or whether it 
was conferred upon him in an informal way by the brethren, are 
matters not of record ; but it is evident that after the council in Je- 
rusalem, which decided the emancipation of the Gentiles from Jewish 
thralldom, Paul's ascendency was recognized. His discipleship had 
been fully established, Barnabas vouching for it in the beginning; 
and now his apostleship seems to be fully approved, yet not without 
some embarrassment and possibly resistance. Perhaps the secret rea- 
son for the separation of Barnabas from Paul was the growing jeal- 
ousy of the former respecting the growing power of the latter ; for it 
was about this time when Paul, flushed with his victory at Jerusalem, 
quite willingly consented to do independent work. The positions of 
Paul and Barnabas are, therefore, reversed ; Paul is master, Barnabas 
is co-operator or follower of others. Renan complains of this usurpa- 
tion on the part of Paul ; but it is an instance of the survival of the 
fittest. Paul was a born leader; Barnabas was a good worker, but 
not an original superintendent. 

Renan also grieves over the exaltation of Paul, and the diminished 
or fading splendors of Peter, who he declares was the greatest of 
apostles. Paul is nothing; but, "talk to me of Peter," says the 
Frenchman, " who bends the heads of kings, shatters empires, 
walks upon the asp and the basilisk, treads under foot the lion and 
the dragon, and holds the keys of heaven." Peter wrote two epistles 
of comparatively minor value ; Paul wrote fourteen epistles, every one 
packed with supernatural truth. Peter labored chiefly in Syria; Paul 
in Syria, Asia Minor, and Europe. Peter was a bigot after conver- 
sion ; Paul a philanthropic Christian from the moment of his new 
birth. Peter was a Jewish Christian until Paul opened to his vision 
the world-wide, world-embracing ideal of Jesus Christ ; Paul was a Gen- 
tile Christian from the beginning, broad-gauged, humanity-loving, race- 
saving. Renan, influenced by Catholic tradition, shakes the bones of 
Peter at the Christian Church ; we, influenced by a Protestant faith, 
point to the crown of Paul as the inducement to walk in his footsteps. 



A CONSCIENCE-GOVERNED MAN. 405 

Paul, as the exemplar of Christianity, is a very interesting study. 
Human at all times, even under inspiration, he is not to be thought 
of as faultless, but it is small business to dwell on his deficiencies to 
the exclusion of his excellences. An artist might discover some 
slight defect in one of the figures in the dome of St. Peter's, but 
such defect would not overthrow the reputation of Angelo as an art- 
ist. Imperfection in human character, refined by grace, is not a 
demonstration of the failure of Christianity to effect its blessed work. 
Acknowledging, without detailing, supposed weaknesses in Paul, he is 
nevertheless an exemplar, not eclipsed by any contemporary or by any 
modern saint. Even the sun has its ecliptic, or more nearly analogical, 
its black spots, but it shines and enlightens the world. When Renan 
disputes Paul's saintship, and charges him with being harsh, severe, 
and repelling, he exhibits his prejudice, and advertises an evil pur- 
pose in blackmailing so illustrious a character in the Christian Church. 
Few men have so often quoted the conscience for the regulation of 
conduct as Paul, who in his wildest moods [of persecution verily 
thought he was doing God's service. Thus reasoned he, showing that 
he aimed to have reference to a standard of righteousness, even be- 
fore his relations to the old faith had been dissolved. In later life 
he had reference always to the Gospel order and the Gospel ideal of 
life, and as his conscience was educated in Christian responsibility he 
obeyed its signals or communications with unfailing persistency and 
a steady purpose. 

But as a conscience-governed man is not the highest type of hu- 
man character, inasmuch as the conscience is not infallible, so Paul 
is seen, not at his best, until he is the subject of spiritual leader- 
ship, and is a divine instrument for the fulfillment of divine pur- 
poses. He is the righteous man who is under the sovereignty and 
regnancy of the divine Spirit. He is a God-governed man. Paul 
belongs to this class. It is as a religious man, divinely guided, di- 
vinely used, performing the duties of a divinely called and a divinely 
endowed man, that he is man's example. It was bold in him to say 
to the Philippians, "Those things which ye have both learned, and 
received, and heard, and seen in me, do." He appealed to his life 
as an example of Christianity. 

Kenan, disposed at least once to do his subject justice, recognizes 
the man of action in Paul, comparing him to* Luther, and also dis- 
covers in him that "peculiar characteristic" in a great soul to 
" grow great and expand without ceasing," comparing him in this 
respect to Alexander. This is the limit of his recognitions. Luther 
resembles him ; Alexander is like him. He is the man of force, 
he is a conqueror, he is a commander. Because he is Alexander or 



406 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Luther over again, Renan might have placed him above Peter and 
the other apostles, but he reduces him below them. Paul was 
the man of his age, the man of character, the man of conscience, the 
man of Christianity. 

Paul, as a martyr, is a tender subject, full of inspiration. His 
death is an argument in favor of his religion. Death brought no 
terror to his great soul. When stoned at Lystra ; when mobbed in 
Jerusalem ; when shipwrecked in the Bay of Malta ; when a prisoner 
in Philippi; he could say, "None of these things move me." No 
danger appalled him ; no prospect restrained his enthusiasm ; no suf- 
fering quieted his activity. Believing in the sanctifying power of 
tribulation, he expected it to come, and submitted to it with all hu- 
mility and grace. When, therefore, under sentence of death, he 
could write, " I am ready to be offered up." His life-work finished, 
he calmly waited for the heavenly reward. Suffering the martyr's 
fate, he received the martyr's crown. 

His influence — will it ever die? If, as Renan concedes, he is the 
representative of a "marching and conquering Christianity," and if 
Christianity continues to march on and conquer, the name of Paul 
will have a fixed place in history, and his influence will abide in the 
heart of the world. Determined, if possible, to uproot that influence 
from Christian nations, the French critic represents that, until- the 
Reformation, Paul was well-nigh forgotten, but that Luther rescued 
him, Protestantism championed him, and a "new era of glory and 
authority " for him ensued ; but that the reign of Paul is now draw- 
ing to a close. It is true the Reformation superseded Peter with 
Paul, and the highest type of Christianity has since prevailed in the 
world ; and if Paul is declining we are not aware of it. Renan is 
anxious for his decline, and imagines that it has taken place. When 
Jesus shall decline, then Paul shall decline. 

Paul is more than the representative of apostolie Christianity, 
which, in its original terms and purposes, was Jewish, and, therefore, 
inferior to that which the Master taught and designed to perpetuate. 
He stands apart as the representative of all the revelations of the 
divine Teacher, and as the expounder of all the truths which the 
Christian religion is supposed to embody. From the original apostles 
a historic Christianity emanates; from Paul, a vital Christianity. 
From the twelve, a synoptic Gospel ; from Paul, a systematic religion. 
From the one, a miscellaneous Christianity ; from the other, a doctrinal 
Christianity. Renan suggests that Paul is responsible for bad the- 
ologies, and that he imported metaphysics into religion. The Gospels 
are alphabetical schools; Paul is a theological university. 

Paul introduced the Gospel to the Gentile world, opened the door 



THE KEY TO GOSPEL PR0PAGAND1SM. 407 

that had always been shut, and laid the foundation for a universal 
Christian civilization. Sectional or race religions were as common as 
the reeds on the banks of the Jordan. A universal religion was not 
even a conception or abstraction. Christianity revealed the concep- 
tion; the apostles disputed over it; the Jews pronounced it heretical, 
fanatical; while Paul embraced it, and put it into execution. Peter 
did go to the house of Cornelius, but Paul invaded the Roman em- 
pire with it, and turned the world "upside down." The Gospel to the 
Gentiles meant new government, new customs, new social and moral ideas; 
it meant the destruction of paganism, and the uplifting of the sons of Ja- 
pheth into a Christian civilization. Hence, in calculations respecting 
the forces underlying the world's progress, the Gospel can not be 
omitted, and Paul can not be forgotten. 

Paul built the bridge between Judaism and Christianity. No 
apostle so grieved over the defection of the Jews, and their inability 
to appreciate the Gospel, as did Paul. Loving them, he preached to 
them, and predicted that, recovering from their deception and ex- 
tinguishing their prejudices, they will at last embrace the rejected 
Messiah. On Paul's prophecies, teachings, and suggestions, and affec- 
tionate remonstrances, may be based the hope of their return into the 
kingdom of God ; and then shall the end come. Paul stands midway 
between Jew and Gentile, to unite both in the love of Christ ; and, 
when it is accomplished, he will be acknowledged as the chief instru- 
ment in the consummation. 

Paul gives to the Christian Church the key to Gospel propagan- 
dism, and reveals the plan by which the world will be brought to 
Christ. Christ's commission is "Go." Paul's life was an execution 
of the commission. Christ commands; Paul obeys. Christ gives us 
orders; Paul gives us methods. From Christ we learn what to do; 
from Paul, how to succeed. The itinerating plan of conquest, which 
gave Asia Minor and Europe to Paul, will conduct the world to the 
Savior. Is not Paul the exponent of Christianity ? 



408 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE) PROVINCE OR CHRISTIANITY. 

CHRISTIANITY is the philosophy of the divine activity expressed 
in governmental relations to the universe and the creatures who 
inhabit it. It is not a speculation touching these relations, but a 
revelation, supported by all-sufficient testimony, both internal and 
external, addressed to the intelligence of the human race. According 
to its own terms, it is more than an inquiry concerning the truth ; it is 
the truth. Its specific purpose is the revelation of truth, or the media- 
tion between reason and truth. Its province is the province of mediated, 
necessary truth, in which it proposes solutions for speculations, and rev- 
elations for discussions. It states and settles the questions of the ages, 
taking them up where philosophy lays them down, and unfolds them 
by methods peculiar to itself, and satisfactory to the human mind. 

In a preliminary sense, it is necessary to determine if Christianity 
includes all truth, or truth of a peculiar kind ; for if restricted to one 
truth, or one kind of truth, our duty will be to separate such truth 
from all others, and then consider it in its fullness and relations. To 
define the limitations of religion, or to prescribe the inquiries of Chris- 
tianity, involves a knowledge of Christianity itself, to which no one 
has perfectly attained. Of Christianity we think we know something ; 
but, as its stretches out into the infinite realm, including the contents 
of divine wisdom, and glorying in supernatural wonders, it is not 
certain that the human mind can properly mark its boundaries, or 
even declare its purposes. To affirm that Christianity is the religion 
of the illimitable is to open the door to mysteries without number, 
and to put it beyond human understanding ; to affirm that its prov- 
ince is clearly defined, requires one to point out the boundary lines, 
which in some directions are either obscure or too distant to be 
observed. 

Recognizing the difficulty, we dispose of, it by announcing that 
there are at least two fields of inquiry proper for religion to occupy. 
The one is the field of the natural or phenomenal world ; otherwise 
the physical universe. To what extent Christianity may undertake 
to interpret nature will be shown in succeeding pages ; it is enough 
now to state that a religious interpretation of nature is justifiable, 
and that Christianity is supported by the natural world may be 
made apparent. The two are so related that one may be turned to 



PHYSICAL BASIS OF TRUTH. 409 

the defense of the other. The mutual relations, the differences, and 
the resemblances between natural and spiritual truth have escaped 
discovery or acknowledgment, both in scientific and religious cir- 
cles, involving them in needless controversy and hopeless disunion. 
Truth is without limitations, but the scientific relation to truth 
is one aspect, and the religious relation to truth is another. The 
difference is not in the truth, but in the relations of science and re- 
ligion to it. 

Studying nature in its lower aspect, as the region of facts, to- 
gether with its laws, forms, forces, uses, systems, and adaptations, the 
sciences are established; but the scientific view of nature is not a 
complete interpretation of its spirit or end. To ascertain the spirit 
and purpose of nature it must be viewed from another stand-point ; 
and as Christianity interprets the spirit of nature, so nature is found 
to reflect Christianity. Paul declares that the invisible things of the 
Godhead are indicated in the visible creation ; that is, nature is a dem- 
onstration of the theistic hypothesis, and of infinite truth. Hence, 
the theologian may inquire of nature for testimony to Christian truth, 
as well as the scientist for the facts of science. If chemistry, geology, 
physiology, zoology, botany, meteorology, and biology issue from nat- 
ure, as scientific truths, so do theism, depravity, regeneration, atone- 
ment, immortality, resurrection, heaven, and hell as religious truths. 
Christianity, as well as science, has a physical basis, which, however, 
must be sought to be found. 

To establish its truths Christianity invades the natural, demanding 
a knowledge of its facts, laws, and forces, and appeals to the mind 
through the natural in proof of its revelations of higher truth. This 
process is in the interest of religion, and not in the interest of science. 
Nature is tributary to religion, as it is to science, but each has its 
own interpretations, inquiries, purposes. These inquiries establish the 
limitations of the scientific and religious interpretations of nature. 
The limitations of Christianity are the limitations of its inquiries, 
which concern religious truth ; the limitations of science are the lim- 
itations of its inquiries which concern physical truth. Neither in- 
vades the other ; there is no collision of inquiry ; both co-exist in the 
same field, are supported by the same facts, and establish one truth 
in its two-faced variety of matter and spirit. 

The other field of inquiry is the supernatural, or the spiritual uni- 
verse, of which Christianity is the purported revelation. It is a vast, 
unbounded empire of realities, distinct from the natural, but whose 
spirit often strikes, invades, is incorporated with, the natural, illu- 
minating it and explaining it. The peculiar province of Christianity 
is to reveal the spiritual, not only in its connections with the natural, 



410 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

but also in its independent character and eternal essence. Purely re- 
ligious truths are essentially superhuman, having their roots in the 
unseen or spiritual universe, and descending, in their growth, into 
human, history, according to man's needs and sympathies. As the 
spiritual is associated in mysterious ways with the natural, justifying 
an interpretation of the natural from the spiritual stand-point, so the 
spiritual is associated with the human, justifying an interpretation of 
man from the stand-point of Christianity. 

Christianity, in the lowest sense, is the religion or philosophy of 
the natural, but in the highest sense it is the religion or philosophy 
of the supernatural. As, however, it has its limitations when applied 
to the natural, so it has its limitations when applied to the supernat- 
ural. It does not reveal all the supernatural. There is a vast un- 
known in the spiritual universe. Questions without number, with 
reference to eternal things, Christianity does not answer ; it is beyond 
its province even to attempt to answer them. The existence of a 
supernatural world, of supernatural truth, of a supernatural spirit, 
Christianity makes known, but it does not define the boundaries be- 
tween the natural and supernatural, nor does it indicate the processes 
of supernatural manifestations, nor the exact differentia of the super- 
natural. The doctrine of regeneration is a revealed truth ; the in- 
strument of regeneration is the Spirit of God ; the process of regener- 
ation is unknown and unknowable. In like manner the truths 
revealed relate to doctrines, experiences, instruments, purposes, and 
results, while processes are hidden, or, at the most, only inferred. 
The supernatural is revealed with limitations. 

The circle of Christianity is not large enough to include all truth, 
except in the subsidiary sense that it includes all revealed truth. Its 
relation to the natural and supernatural is a relation of limitation; 
its purpose is neither wholly natural- — that is, scientific — nor super- 
natural — that is, altogether religious. It includes both and differs 
from both. 

Christianity is the only truth ; it is more than a single province 
of truth. The province of Christianity is, in the very highest sense, 
the province of truth. There are truths not in themselves definitely 
religious, as there are religions not definitely true, both of which 
sustain relations to the truth of truths, and must be estimated in an 
interpretation of Christianity. What, then, it may be asked, is the 
relation of Christianity, as the truth of truths, to other truths, other 
religions, other systems? In the discovery, explanation, and an- 
nouncement of truth, have philosophy and Christianity agreed, or is 
there any relation whatever between them as systems of similar 
truths? In its attitude of hostility to Christianity, materialism has 



DIFFERENCE OF METHOD. 411 

held very little in common with religion ; but as to fundamental 
truth, theistic, ethnic, and eschatological, philosophy might readily, 
and without stultification, accept the teachings of Christianity, be- 
cause they are not incompatible. From Thales to Herbert Spencer 
the great problems of creation, being, mind, and the future have en- 
gaged the most serious philosophic investigation, as also they consti- 
tute the most serious revelations of Christianity. In this respect the 
province of Christianity and the province of philosophy are one and 
the same. In method of discovery, development, and presentation 
of truth the two systems are radically different ; hence the hostility, 
which is primarily a hostility of method only. The oneness of Chris- 
tianity and philosophy is the oneness of pursuit; the difference of 
Christianity and philosophy is the difference of method. Out of the 
difference of method grows the difference of result. 

It is precisely this difference of method that accounts for the fail- 
ure of the one and the success of the other. Respecting the greatest 
truths, philosophy has failed in its explanations and declarations, pro- 
ducing as monuments of its incompetency the wretched and ghostly 
forms of materialism and agnosticism, while Christianity, pulsating 
with a divine energy, announced the sublimest doctrines with a faith 
born of knowledge, and a fullness that proves it to be a revelation 
from God. The province of Christianity is philosophical in the sense 
that, taking up philosophical truth in its nakedness and wretched- 
ness, it gives it a new body, clothes it with a supernatural beauty, 
and breathes into it a supernatural life. Under this transforming 
process whatever is'absurd in philosophy is cast out, and its truth passes 
over in a new and true form into the religious realm. Philosophic 
Realism, absurd in its very nature, is lost in the rational conception 
of the existence of absolute ideas, or inherent ideals of mind ; that is, 
the separate existence of ideas, outside of mind, is supplanted by the 
doctrine of inherent ideas of absolute mind. Epicurean atheism is 
succeeded by Christian theism ; Pythagorean transmigration is given 
up for revealed immortality ; Alexandrian mysticism fades into Gos- 
pel spirituality ; evolutionary ethics is replaced by supernaturalistic 
law ; and the truth of a personal, providential superintendence of 
worldly affairs roots out pessimism and the whole troop of philosophic 
falsehoods and errors. 

Christianity is philosophical, not only in its truth, but equally in 
its consistency and certainties. Mansel objects to the attempt to sup- 
port religious truth by rationalistic foundations, which is the same as 
saying that he denies to Christianity a philosophic consistency and 
certainty. He is not the first who would deprive religion of a philo- 
sophical basis, nor the first to concede certain contradictory elements 



412 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

in the Christian notion of the Absolute and Infinite, and that religious 
truth must be accepted on other grounds than that of philosophic co- 
herency and rationalistic transparency. So far forth as it is a state- 
ment of truth, Christianity is a revelation; so far forth as it demon- 
strates its truths, whether by an appeal to the natural, experimental, 
historical, archaeological, or to the inner consistency of truth, it pur- 
sues a philosophic method, and is so far a philosophy. The truth of 
revealed religion is supposed to rest upon, and to be vindicated by, 
moral evidence, while the application to it of philosophical tests or 
principles, by which a mathematical certainty may be reached, is 
considered presumptive, and the attempt pronounced a failure. Yet 
it is clear that Christianity may submit to such a test without danger 
to it as a whole, or to any part of it. The concession that the proofs 
of Christianity are moral, and can not be philosophical, is damaging 
in the extreme. Dealing with philosophical truth, it may be exposed 
to philosophical tests ; and, as philosophical truth demonstrates itself 
to a mathematical certainty, abjuring moral evidence, so Christianity 
may demonstrate itself to a mathematical certainty, employing moral 
evidence with reserve, and then only incidentally. The truth of 
revelation is as open to demonstration as the truth of philosophy. 
Revelation itself is a demonstration. Christianity is the demonstration 
of the supernatural, as philosophy is the demonstration of the natural. 
One is as complete as the other ; one is as mathematically certain as 
the other. Christianity teaches this view, or it would not be taught 
here. In his introductory word to Theophilus, Luke says he writes 
his Gospel that he might "know the certainty of those things wherein 
thou hast been instructed." Christianity is a certainty, a consistency, 
a rational, philosophic, supernaturally demonstrated system of truth. 
It is truth revealed ; therefore, of unquestionable certainty, more re- 
liable than any mathematically demonstrated truth. Incarnation is 
as well established as any historical event recorded by Gibbon or 
Macaulay. Atonement may be demonstrated as clearly as any prob- 
lem in Euclid. Independently, however, of historical tests of the 
historic data, and of logical or mathematical proofs of the doctrinal 
truths of Christianity, the whole is addressed to human intelligence 
on the superior ground of a supernatural revelation, which has in it 
every element of certainty and every assurance of absolute verity. 
On common philosophic grounds, the truth of Christianity may be 
fully demonstrated ; on its own ground, it makes itself transparently 
true, and is above all suspicion. This is the highest achievement — to 
make truth transparent, to make it appear what it is, to relieve it of 
all illusion and error, to fasten it upon the mind as incontrovertibly 
and eternally true. In its philosophical relations and demonstrations, 



BRAHMINISM A PROPHECY.. 413 

Christianity undertakes to accomplish this work, adding the super- 
natural proof of its claim as a revelation. 

In the same spirit, Christianity disposes of the truths that other 
religions claim as their exclusive property, appropriating them when 
in harmony with itself, fulfilling their own predictions respecting the 
appearance of divine teachers, and uprooting the errors and supersti- 
tions that have characterized them, and unfitted them for the very 
purposes for which they were established. The old religions were 
prophecies of the new, in that they contained many truths or sugges- 
tions, which, like those of philosophy, required elaboration, trans- 
parency, systematic and orderly development into unity, before they 
could exercise the native power in them, or before they could be ac- 
cepted at their full value. Gold in the ore is not as valuable as gold 
minted. Truth in the ore, such as it was in the old religions, is not 
as valuable as truth cleansed from error, and lifted out of its crude 
environment into a stately attitude of independence and beauty. 
Christianity brought to light the hidden truths of the old religions, 
and introduced them in new forms to the attention of the world. In 
this work it revealed the value of truth, but it was quite as distinct 
a revelation as had it revealed the truth directly from God. To re- 
veal, explain, and elaborate old, existent, but hidden and misunder- 
stood, truths is as necessary as to reveal new and entirely unknown 
truths. In either case the result is truth, and the method is the 
sam e — revelation. 

Brahminism, a system of religious dreams, furnishes a striking 
illustration of this statement. Among its essential teachings are those 
respecting gods, incarnations, trinities, sacrifices, and divine teachers, 
the whole a crude prophecy of the leading doctrines of Christianity, 
for the latter proclaims Incarnation, the Trinity, Atonement, and 
Messiahship, as fundamental ideas, as essential facts, without which 
religion is impossible. Brahminism is an antecedent religion, of which 
Christianity is a full revelation or development. The Persian 
prophets predicted the birth of a divine child from a virgin, and the 
Athenians in Paul's day erected an altar to the "Unknown God," 
the prophecy of the one and the altar of the other pointing to two 
great truths of Christianity. In the one, these truths are in an em- 
bryonic state ; in the other, they are developed. The old religions 
were the forerunners of the new. Christianity was a reformation of 
old forms, as well as a revelation of new ideas. It was a development 
of old truth, as well as the announcement of new truth. The aim 
of all religions is the same, as the anxieties of the world in all ages 
have been the same. The same problems, the same hopes and fears, 



414 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY, 

the same ideas, more or less clear, have interested the race from the 
beginning; and the religion that solves the problems, satisfies the 
hopes, and evolves the ideas into great transparent realities, must 
finally reign in the world until it ends. The early religions undertook 
to pilot the race in the dark, but hoped for the morning, and an- 
nounced its coming. Trench observes : " These dim prophetic antici- 
pations, the dreams of the world, so far from helping to persuade us 
that all we hold is a dream likewise, are rather that which ought 
to have preceded the world's awaking. These parhelia do not pro- 
claim every thing else to be optical illusions, but announce and wit- 
ness for a sun that is traveling into sight." 

The relationship of religions is an acknowledged fact. Holding 
to similar truths, one prepared the way for another, or gave birth to 
another, as Brahminism to Buddhism, and all prepared the way for 
Christianity, which, recovering old truth from its superstitious en- 
vironment, joined it to new truth as it descended from heaven. The 
relationship of religions does not imply the necessary unity of relig- 
ions, only so far forth as the characteristic of truth is its unity. The 
unity of religions is the unity of the truth in them. James Freeman 
Clarke speaks of Christianity as "one of the good religions," and 
W. H. Channing alludes to it as " one of many religions, all essen- 
tially divine." These are misleading statements, for the independ- 
ent and supernatural character of Christianity is a great fact, and 
must not be ignored ; nor must other religions be permitted to 
occupy the rank of divine religions, else in what respect is Christian- 
ity any better than preceding religions ? Christianity is a development 
of the old ; it is also a revelation of the new. As a development, it 
is superior to the old ; as a revelation, it is independent of them. 

However, it is clear that the province of Christianity is, in its 
broadest sense, the province of all religions, undertaking nothing not 
common to them, but succeeding wherein they failed. It is a new 
religion in doing that which, other religions, having the same ends in 
view, could not realize or accomplish. The province of Christianity 
is definitely the province of religion. 

It has been stated that its work is limited, both in its revelations 
of the natural and supernatural ; that its relation to philosophy is 
fraternal and helpful, its purpose being the recovery of truth from 
philosophic uncertainty, and its assertion in transparent and divine 
forms ; and that its relation to religion is the same, its purpose being 
the development of all the truths they contain. In addition, it has 
been hinted that Christianity is a revelation of truths not found 
either in nature, philosophy, or religions, and that it has special 



REVELATION A METHOD. 415 

functions, or a special mission. With this specialty of Christianity 
it is important to become acquainted. 

Christianity, separated from other religions, is the religion of su- 
pernatural truth, or of necessary spiritual truth, made known, not by 
philosophic methods, nor by ordinary religious methods, but solely by 
revelation. The province of paganism is the province of superstition; 
the province of philosophy is the province of speculation; the province 
of Christianity is the province of revelation. This is its distinguishing 
feature ; this it is that isolates it from philosophies and religions, not- 
withstanding their oneness of aim and points of agreement ; this it is 
that places Paul above Plato. 

The method of revelation, for it is a method only of communicat- 
ing truth, justifies itself by the singular and stupendous fact that 
what is called necessary spiritual truth can be found only in the Book 
alleged to contain a revelation. The question of revelation might be 
waived, if the truths of the book were accepted as genuine; but a 
denial of revelation is implicit with a denial of the truths supposed 
to be revealed. Practically, there is no difference between faith in 
revelation as a method of communicating truth, and faith in the 
truths alleged to be the result of revelation. Faith in the method 
and faith in the result are one and the same, and a defense of the 
one is equal to a defense of the other. Whether the Book may be 
said to contain a revelation of truth, or is the truth itself; whether it 
is plenarily, dynamically, or mechanically inspired, or inspired only 
so far as the truth is concerned ; whether it is substantially or in 
every particular true, — it is not important to decide. The main 
point is, that Christianity is a revelation of necessary spiritual truth ; 
this is its province — a province not occupied by philosophy or other 
religions. 

To the method of revelation it has been objected that it refutes 
itself by an alleged want of transparency in the truth it undertakes 
to reveal, and that obscure truth, or truth obscurely presented, is in- 
consistent with truth alleged to be revealed. The objection arises 
from a mistaken view of the method itself, or the function of in- 
spiration. Revelation is not synonymous with full disclosures, ex- 
plicit explanations, and perfect illuminations of truth. That is a 
revelation, in a Biblical sense, that serves to open the way to knowl- 
edge, or furnishes the key to a limited knowledge of supernatural 
truth. The Bible is a glass through which one sees the truth ; it is 
a telescope which he points to the spiritual universe, and through 
which he sees the universe ; but he sees it not perfectly, although he 
sees it. 

Again, a revealed truth may be so obscurely expressed, or hidden. 



416 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

from view, as to require no inconsiderable effort to find it, or to rec- 
ognize it when found; it is nevertheless in a state of revelation. 
Oxygen was not discovered until within about a century, but it was 
in the atmosphere when Plato was inhaling it in Athens, and when 
Abraham snuffed the air in Chaldea. Prophetic truth, wrapped in 
symbols ; Messianic truth, hidden in poetic metaphors ; monotheistic 
truth, unseen in the ashes on patriarchal altars ; eschatological truth, 
opening its gates but a little in the metaphysics of apostles ; soteri- 
ological truth, adumbrated in types and shadows and services of 
prophets and disciples ; all necessary spiritual truth is in the great 
book, hidden or obscure perhaps, but it is there, to be found, un- 
folded, appropriated, used. If it were not there, the claim of revela- 
tion would be false ; no difference how it is there, hidden like pearls 
in the deep, or blazing like suns in the firmament, as it is there, the 
claim of revelation is true. 

Moreover, some truths of revelation are declared as mysteries, 
never to be explained; they are to be known as unknowable, and 
they are revealed as such. The secret thoughts of Deity ; the pro- 
cesses of spiritual work ; the doctrines of atonement, immortality, 
resurrection, heaven, and hell, are involved in mystery. As the 
working facts of Christianity, they are powerful and sufficient ; as 
the mysteries of revelation, they are accepted, and the soul is silent 
in their presence. In respect to mysteries, revelation leaves us in 
ignorance ; a paradox not difficult of explanation when all that it 
includes and excludes is remembered. For instance, Christianity is 
a revelation of the monotheistic idea concreted in a personal God, 
but in such a way that, while it enlightens, it also darkens. The 
revelation of God is incomplete. He is known and unknown. 
"Verily, thou art a God that hidest thyself," is consistent with "he 
that hath seen me hath seen the Father." A hidden and a visible, 
a seen and an unseen God, is revealed in the sacred books. All other 
doctrines are mingled light and darkness, because of the one purpose 
of religion. 

The limitations of Christianity are not in contradiction of, but 
rather in harmony with, the idea of revelation There are necessary 
spiritual truths, which it is the province of Christianity to disclose, 
but back of these there are supernatural truths, equally necessary to 
God's ideal purposes, but not necessary to man's existence, develop- 
ment, or destiny, that Christianity does not disclose. Truths in no 
way related to human interests find no place in revelation. Such truths 
may address the intelligence of redeemed souls in the next life, but, 
having no reference to redemptive or providential purposes in this 
life, they are not revealed, and Christianity is in no wise weakened 



THEISM FUNDAMENTAL. 417 

by not revealing them. Only the absolutely necessary spiritual truth 
can be the subject of revelation. 

If this is the province of revelation ; that is, if it is circumscribed 
by necessary truth, the province of Christianity can not be larger, 
different, or superior, for the province of one is the province of 
the other. Whatever is consistent with the idea of revelation, whether 
limitation, obscurity, or imperfection, is consistent also with Christian- 
ity as the religion of revelation. If revealed truth is true, then Chris- 
tianity is true ; if one is false, the other is false. The two are identical 
in substance, and share the same fate of ill or good. 

Now, as the necessary spiritual truths of revelation are super- 
natural, or such as are beyond the intellect to discover, originate, or 
explain by natural or scientific principles, so the truths of Christian- 
ity are supernatural in character, and must rank above all other 
truth either in philosophy or religious. The necessary truths of Chris- 
tianity may be classified as follows : I. Theistic ; II. Governmental ; 
III. Anthropological; IV. Soteriological ; V. Eschatological. This list 
may not include all that belongs to the religious concept, but it com- 
prehends the vital and sovereign facts of Christianity, with which we 
are more immediately concerned. 

Kespecting these necessary truths, it may be asked, Are they truths? 
Are they sufiiciently revealed ? Assuming that they are truths, reve- 
lations, inspirations, we can proceed ; otherwise, the whole system of 
Christianity as a revelation must be defended, which is beyond our 
present purpose. The defense of revealed truth is not so much re- 
quired as a statement of what is revealed truth, or its separation from 
all other truth, and its own exaltation. Theistic truth occupies the first 
place in the category of necessary or primary supernatural truth, since, 
without a personal God, the universe is inexplicable, and, without a 
knowledge of God, religion is impossible. Atheism, agnosticism, posi- 
tivism, and materialism, rise up in frenzied horror against the the- 
istic conception, which has its roots both in human consciousness and 
in supernatural revelation. Aside from these, it is supported by onto- 
logical, cosmological, and psychological arguments, which have never 
been answered, except as speculation seems to answer truth. To 
abandon such a conception, grounded in consciousness, science, phi- 
losophy, and revelation, can not be done, except as one abandons all 
tests of truth, and, therefore, all truth. Our statement of theistic 
truth does not require an investigation of the proofs of the existence 
of God, but merely that the fact of the divine existence is a part of 
the subject-matter of revelation, and fundamental to the religion based 
upon revelation. 

The theistic idea is not the sole product of Christianity, for it 

27 



418 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

existed in the world long before the advent of the incarnate Teacher, 
and, with all the superstition that environed it, it exercised a con- 
trolling influence on the old religions, if it did not produce them. 
Tracing the career of the idea until Christianity appropriated and 
ennobled it, it appears like a homeless and fugitive idea, the skeleton 
of a great truth, without plan, or a historic purpose, left to itself to 
do a tentative work, and then to be taken up finally by a religion 
that would honor it, and give it a crown and a throne. Many 
truths now credited to Christianity were floating ages before the 
Messiah taught them in the public mind, like seeds in the wind, 
which, dropping here and there, took root, grew, and bore fruit in 
worships, ceremonies, and religions. The idea of God, prayer, sacri- 
fice, resurrection, immortality, judgment, and eternal settlements, 
were not unknown prior to Christianity, but they were dreams, su- 
perstitions, speculations, eventuating into truths through the reality 
of inspiration. Occasionally a strong-minded teacher would arise, as 
if touched by the divine hand, and commissioned to do something 
new, and a religion, embodying these ideas, would be framed; but 
the teacher himself ignorant, they were sure to be clothed with ab- 
surdities, fantasies, and cruelties. Hence the need of a clear revela- 
tion of truths whose existence had been inspiringly suspected for ages. 
Dreams, suspicions, speculations, and superstitions before Christ; 
afterward, truths no longer in shadows, but sunbeams striking 
within the horizon of human vision. 

The theistic idea must be interpreted by this historic plan or rule 
of the development of Christian ideas. Its history is the history of 
dreams ending in realities, of superstitions converted into facts, of 
speculations metamorphosed into truths. Scarcely a tribe of men, 
however barbarous, or stupid even to religious insensibility, has been 
found that has not entertained the idea of a Supreme Power and the 
correlative idea of worship. All nations, however thick their moral 
darkness and all-pervading their superstitions, have quarantined their 
coasts, so to speak, against the infection of atheism, and have wor- 
shiped either man-made idols, the sun and stars, or the objects of 
nature, meanwhile waiting for a divine teacher, or a revelation of the 
true God. Neither the old religions, fastening themselves to the 
theistic idea, nor the old philosophies, speculating on the probabilities 
of a First Cause, were able to take the idea, strip it of vagueness, 
vitalize it with the eternal breath, decorate it with divine beauty, and 
present it to the race as the holiest of supernatural truths. For this 
consummation of the idea the race anxiously waited for ages ; every 
ceremony was a prayer, every sigh a hope, and every thought a de- 
sire for revelation ; but priests and philosophers made no response, or 



MONOTHEISM THE SPECIALTY OF REVELATION. 419 

only such response as sunk them deeper in the pit of ignorance. 
The anxiously sought truth Christianity at last disclosed, shooting its 
light like early morning rays over the Oriental world, and revealing 
not only God, but also the universe and its infinite contents, to the 
joy of a race of men sometime to become the sons of God. This was 
the function of Christianity, its specialty, the revelation of God, and 
all that the idea carried with it. It revealed him by appropriation 
and assimilation of the idea of God, so long in the world ; it revealed 
him by a close and particularizing enumeration of his attributes; it 
revealed him in the character of an infinite personality ; it revealed 
him as the First Cause, Omnipotent Ruler, Universal Benefactor, and 
gracious Redeemer; it revealed him as absolute and unconditioned 
being, and in anthropomorphic relations and characteristics, that he 
might the more readily be apprehended. It sounded his name 
throughout the universe, and turned the pessimism of the ages into 
the laughter of eternal praise. 

We say this is a revelation ; philosophy can explain its presence 
in the world on no other hypothesis. The pre-Christian idea of God 
has surrendered to the Christian idea, which now dominates as the 
true and only idea in civilization. It is the theistic representation of 
Christianity that is quenching the superstitions of the old religions, 
and piloting philosophy out of its speculations into the region of 
reality. This is a necessary spiritual truth, for the particular revela- 
tion of which the world must forever be indebted to the great religion 
of the Nazarene. 

As an adjunct of the theistic conception, the governmental idea 
of the world, or the reign of a providential spirit both in nature and 
human history, deserves special consideration. Its truest representa- 
tion belongs to Christianity. Viewed from the stand-point of philos- 
ophy, the government of the Supreme Power is a centralization of 
weakness, imbecility, indifference, and cruelty; philosophers them- 
selves in their opinions swinging between fatalism and pessimism on 
the one hand, and pantheism and deism on the other. Herbert 
Spencer concedes to the unsearchable, indiscernible, and unknowable 
God, a benevolent spirit working in the universe for the attainment 
of the best ends ; but the attribute thus philosophically framed or 
conceived is different from the attribute of infinite goodness which 
the Scriptures declare to be the glory of God. The evolutionist inter- 
prets the government of the world as strictly of and within itself ; it 
is under a system of law, self-instituted and self-administered. The 
reign of personal authority in nature is disputed and scorned. Hart- 
mann, accepting the existence of a Supreme Power, regards it totally 
unconscious, both as to its own existence and as to the world's gov- 



420 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ernment, implying the reign of a most absolute and undeviating 
fatalism in human history. Schopenhauer went farther in eliminating 
rational impulses from the intellectual or personal center of the uni- 
verse, turning the eternal throne into a play-house for the ghost of an 
idea, and robbing the universe of a much-needed personal ruler. 
Materialism, positivism, agnosticism, pessimism, and atheism, in single 
attempts or unitedly, have failed to frame a satisfactory theory of the 
government of the world ; and yet this is a necessary truth, quite as 
necessary to philosophy as religion. 

The old religions, imbibing the spirit of the old philosophies, did 
not advance much beyond them, and if they posited a bolder concep- 
tion, it was so involved in superstition as to fail of recognition as a 
new truth, so that neither from the one nor the other emerge comfort- 
ing views of divine Providence, or accurate representations of the 
divine government. 

To Christianity one must go for the truth, or be without it. Ac- 
cording to its tenets, God's government is both general and particular, 
having in view the development of man and the execution of the 
divine ideal in the universe. Tyranny is not found in Christian 
theology as the exponent of the divine administration. As reflected 
by Christianity, among the first notions one receives of the divine 
government is its paternal character, or the divine interest in the 
human family, or the alliance of God with man. This general truth, 
comforting and inspiring, has illustration in the history of the race, 
which, with all its vicissitudes and apparent lapses and uncertainties, 
is a history of progress toward definite ideals, a proof that God is 
directing the world, a proof that the Father cares for his children. 
This idea of progress is as scientific as it is Scriptural, as philosophic 
as it is theologic; and, accepted as Scripturally interpreted or defined, 
man's entire history becomes an illumination of a divine project, is 
seen to be the fulfilling of a divine ideal. This, however, is not its 
chief glory. Its general purposes, however honorable and electrify- 
ing, are lost to the view when the relation of the divine government 
to individual lives is detected and emphasized ; in other words, the 
special providential government of God, as it is unfolded, is seen to 
transcend the general, world-wide, age-long government of the throne. 
This distinction modern philosophy is incompetent to recognize; as 
to the two facts or governments, it denies one at the same time that 
it rejects the other. To Christianity alone is man indebted for the 
supreme thought of a personal government, and a special providential 
spirit in human life. 

This is set forth in the Scriptures in a threefold manner: 
1. Providence respecting the call and mission of the prophets; 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PROPHECY. 421 

2. Providence respecting the assignments of particular men to 
different spheres of usefulness; 3. Providence respecting individual 
life in all its details. As one of the pillars of Christianity, 
prophecy still stands unshaken and unharmed. The mystery of the 
prophetic gift, equal to the mystery of the miracle-working power, 
has never had, nor can it have, any philosophical explanation ; the 
root of the gift, or the process of inspiration, is not in psychology ; 
the only explanation of the power to announce future events is that 
it is an endowment of the Almighty. Daniel, looking down the ages 
from a palace in Babylon, first sees and then portrays the rise and 
fall of kingdoms in a certain historic order, which, as time moves on, 
is fulfilled to the letter ; Isaiah, with eyes opened upon a particular 
event, announces the day when the reign of the Messiah shall begin ; 
Micah designates the humble place of his birth ; Daniel foretells the 
tragedy of his crucifixion ; and David sings of the glories of resurrec- 
tion and ascension. To attempt to explain these prophetic disclosures 
by psychological methods would be very like an attempt to explain 
the trade-winds by the same methods. There are natural things that 
can not be explained by psychology ; there are supernatural things in 
whose presence philosophy is dumb, and prophecy defies the ingenuity 
of the evolutionist to solve it on any other than a divine hypothesis. 

In some subtle way God took possession of the prophets, opened 
their eyes, and, unfolding to their gaze a panorama of events ages 
distant, commanded them to write that the world might know, not so 
much what would happen, as that God is present with men, as ruler, 
inspirer, and friend. This is personal providence on a grand scale, 
the like of which is not seen in the annals of philosophy, and of 
which philosophy can give no rational account. Christianity, the re- 
ligion of inspiration, refers the prophetic impulse to a divine source, 
appealing to the prophetic parchments and their contents in proof 
thereof. 

The divine government is equally personal in its superintendence 
of the special vocations of the great moral heroes of history. Moses, 
divinely called to be leader of the Israelites, towers like some great 
mountain, conspicuous for the handwriting of God upon his brow; 
Joshua, hearing the divine voice, when others imagine the wind is 
blowing, steps into his shoes, a worthy successor of the great law- 
giver ; Elijah, in cave or mountain, commissioned by the angel of 
the Lord, flames through Syria as a herald of the divine administra- 
tion, awakening terror in royal palaces, and then ascends by a new 
route to the skies ; Zerubbabel, of forecasting genius, chosen by the 
directing Mind in the heavens, rebuilds the temple in superior glory, 
on the sacred summits of Moriah ; Paul hears a voice near 



422 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Damascus, obeying which he is prepared for the shipwreck in the 
Mediterranean, and the loftier hurricane in the tribunal of Nero ; 
John, charmed by the sweet invitation of the Master, is ready for 
Patmos, Ephesus, heaven; Peter, leaving the fishing smack at the 
command of the divine One, emerges on Pentecost, shakes Jerusalem, 
and suspends, head downward, from the cross. Supernatural calls 
these ; supernatural lives ; supernatural histories. No divine call is 
heard in the porch of Zeno, or rings through the vaulted chambers 
of the Academy of Plato; not even the Peripatetics, with faces 
toward the sky, see visions, or hear the echoes of heaven. Special 
inspirations to duty are unknown outside of Christianity. 

Of still more importance to the race, Christianity teaches the 
most minute providential care of the individual life, enforcing it by 
an exhibition of the divine regard for smaller things than human in- 
terests, and then representing every providential plan as intended to 
promote those interests. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without 
your Father — men are of more value than many sparrows ; the hairs 
of one's head are numbered — a trifle this, but typical of that which 
is not a trifle ; the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord ; 
he will guide by his counsel into truth and into life everlasting. By 
such revelations the idea of divine providence is imbedded in the 
heart of humanity ; and the governmental truth of Christianity, 
unique, merciful, fascinating, rises into view as a fit corner-stone of 
a religion designed to satisfy human aspiration and to quiet the pessi- 
mistic forebodings of an otherwise irreligious world. 

The anthropological truth of Christianity, isolated from philo- 
sophic representations, is special in its content, and of the nature of 
an independent revelation of self-knowledge and self-interest. It in- 
cludes the genesis of man, with the cognate questions of his antiquity 
and relation to the natural world, or the physiological aspects of the 
race ; all psychological problems, as the nature of mind, the processes 
of intellectual activity, the laws of cognition and perception, the re- 
lation and interaction of soul and body, and the immortality of the 
soul ; all moral problems, as man's positive moral state, the genesis of 
depravity, the origin of ethical relations and duties, the nature and 
extent of human responsibility, and the historic resources of human 
restoration to greatness and perfection. No inquiry, raised by phi- 
losophy concerning man, is ignored by the new religion ; on the con- 
trary, all its inquiries, physiological, psychological, ethical, ethnical, 
and religious, are espoused by it and answered in its own way and 
with sufficient fullness for its purpose. In these respects its function 
is intensely scientific ; that is, it asks for facts, and must have them ; 
it goes where evolution goes ; it may be found in company with 



SOTERIOLOGICAL SUGGESTIONS. 423 

geology, chemistry, botany, physiology, and psychology. Concerning 
God, it is philosophically theological ; concerning the government of the 
world, it is theologically philosophical; concerning man, it is scientifically 
anthropological, and anthropologically theological Christian anthropology 
and scientific anthropology are the hemispheres of the same globe of 
truth ; they fit together, one is necessary to the other. 

Of necessary spiritual truths, which it is the province of Chris- 
tianity to unfold, none are of greater moment or more nearly related 
to human interests, than those which pass as soteriological, or such 
truths as include atonement and regeneration as the sources of re- 
covery from the effects of sin. Ethical systems, for instance, Aris- 
totle's, Hegel's, Spencer's, have an honored place in philosophy ; but 
philosophy is without the soteriological spirit, and is incapable of de- 
vising a soteriological system. Such a system, the content of which 
is the redemptive purpose and project, belongs to, and must come 
from, religion alone, and the best system can emanate only from the 
best religion. In a pessimistic mood the philosopher may point to 
the evils of life, but he can provide no remedy for them ; he may 
sit down in ashes and mourn, but he can not rise with songs in his 
mouth, and shout deliverance from all his troubles ; he can go down 
into dungeons of despair, but he can not ride Ezekiel's wheels of 
light, or ascend into Paul's third heavens of vision. Stoicism, educa- 
tional purification, social ostracism, the pursuit of philosophy — these 
have been suggested as remedies for sin, but a trial of them has 
demonstrated their utter inadequacy. Nor have the old religions 
succeeded any better in soteriological suggestions, although they have 
prescribed more definitely for the healing of the soul's infirmities. 
Penances, sacrifices, ceremonies, ablutions, avail nothing. To Chris- 
tianity alone the race must turn, not only for a remedy, but also an 
adequate remedy for sin. An explanation of atonement, an analysis 
of its process, and the manner in which it is applied and made 
effective in human salvation, are questions that must finally be 
studied; but at present it is sufficient to declare atonement as the 
primal force in the world's moral regeneration. In the life and death 
of Jesus Christ ; in his teachings and miracles ; in his example and 
institutions ; in his agony and triumph ; in his resurrection and 
ascension ; the remedy for sin is complete. It is the only remedy 
that has justified itself in human history, the only remedy that puts 
hope into the heart, and brings salvation to the soul. The specialty 
of Christianity is atonement for sin, or the redemption of man from 
sin. It is a revelation of the redemptive idea, the redemptive pro- 
cess, and the redemptive result, crowning its purpose with achieve- 
ment, and lifting the earth into the heavens. 



424 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Among the necessary spiritual truths which Christianity must 
make known, if they are known at all, are those relating to the future, 
commonly denominated eschatological. Death is a grim fact. To live 
again is a hope ; the ages echo with the song of immortality, and reveal 
it as a conviction of the race ; all religions avow belief in another 
life, but cloud the faith with superstition. The idea then is in the 
ages, and in the heart of man. As usual, philosophy treats this 
most vital question with indifference, or, in its more positive form, re- 
jects the thought of conscious existence after death. Epicurus 
argued against it, while Socrates was inspired with a touching faith in 
its certainty. Emerson presents immortality as the guess of the soul, 
while the materialists announce the probability of the dissolution of 
the spiritual fabric with the body. Enveloped with the uncertainties 
of philosophy and the superstitions of religion, the Gospel dawns 
upon the world, bringing immortality to light, and opening a way 
into the other life. It relieved the old idea of superstition and made 
it a truth, it relieved it of uncertainty and made it a fact. 

In natural order the great truths of resurrection, judgment, 
heaven and hell follow ; they, too, are brought out of darkness into 
light, out of mystery into transparency, out of uncertainty into reality. 
Christ speaks, and the eternal world opens to the gaze of man ; Paul 
speaks, and the dead live ; Peter speaks, and the world is in ashes ; 
John speaks, and hell's lake of fire flashes its heat into the future, 
and heaven's gates of pearl open to receive the martyrs of God. The 
eschatology of Christianity is of the nature of a divine revelation of 
facts, events, and destinies, impossible to be foreknown except as they 
are communicated. The communication of such truth is one of the 
functions of the new religion. 

The province of Christianity is now sufficiently foreshadowed to 
warrant a discussion of its truths. It is the province of the natural 
and the supernatural, with limitations ; of the natural, chiefly as it 
reflects the supernatural, and of the supernatural, chiefly as it reflects 
the divine purposes in their relation to the universe and the creatures 
who inhabit it. In its more definite undertakings it assumes the solu- 
tion of the theistic problem, the presentation of the divine administration in 
its providential aspects, the settlement of all anthropological questions, em- 
ploying scientific helps when necessary to such settlement, the discovery of 
the soteriological resources of the race, and the announcement of a future 
life, with rewards and punishments conditioned upon man's present life ; in 
other words, it undertakes to furnish an abridged history of the di- 
vine activities in the creation of the world, the introductivn of man, the 
recovery of man from the moral lapse of his early career, and the final dis- 
position of man and the universe. Great problems these, to solve which 



JEWISH OR GENTILE CHRISTIANITY. 425 

it invokes the aid of inspiration, and presents its truths in their final 
form, not as philosophic speculations nor as religious superstitions, but 
as revelations of the truth-giving God. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE TWO CHRISTIANITIES. 

IS there in form or name more than one Christianity ? Narrowing 
the question to one line of thought, does the New Testament re- 
veal or contain two Christianities ? Some Jewish writers contend that 
the religion that Jesus drew up, originated, or imposed, was only an im- 
provement or purification of Judaism ; that he contemplated only the 
reform and not the extinction of the Hebrew system ; and that, judg- 
ing by the synoptists, there is no evidence that he went beyond this 
design. They, therefore, speak even friendly of his work, styling his 
religion " Jewish Christianity," and go so far as to say that in the 
first century the Jews and Christians, understanding that the differ- 
ences that separated them related to the Messiahship of Christ, were 
not hostile, but mutually helpful in the propagation of the essentials 
of both faiths. They assert also that the early Christians embraced 
many of the teachings, observed many of the ceremonies, and held 
sacred and inviolable all the laws of the Jews, and that had it not been 
for the perversions of Paul the breach between them had never oc- 
curred. Paul's Christianity they contemptuously style Pauline, Hel- 
lenistic, or Gentile Christianity, in opposition to original or Jewish 
Christianity. 

Here, then, is an issue, based upon an alleged difference between 
religion as taught by Christ and religion as taught by Paul. Is 
Pauline Christianity a perversion of original Christianity ? Did Paul 
or the apostles institute a religion derived in part from and suggested 
by the great Teacher, but in many essentials original with themselves? 
Is Paul the original teacher, the fountain-head of what is popularly 
known as Christianity? Has the Church drifted away with Paul 
from what Christ revealed, taught, and established ? Paul's fourteen 
epistles, written in less than thirty years after the death of the Mas- 
ter, make up the greater portion of the New Testament, and are ex- 
plicit in their statements of truth ; they are literary marvels, and as 
professed inspired documents contain supernatural truths that place 
Paul beyond those who, like him, addressed epistles to the Churches ; 
and it goes without proof that, next to the Master himself, Paul is 



426 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

highest in authority, as he is of all the apostles most definite in his 
experience, and the clearest and fullest in his theology. We would 
not detract from him as a teacher, theologian, exemplar ; his life was 
a sacrifice for the truth ; his death the grandest of martyrdoms ; and 
his memory sacred on earth and vital in heaven. Called out of due 
time, he stands forth the conspicuous head of the apostolic Church, 
teaching more, suffering more, accomplishing more, than any other 
of the illustrious band. 

But did he originate Christianity, or any part of it ? Did he su- 
persede Christ, or do his epistles abound with truths contradictory of 
those taught by the Master, or different in any sense from them? 
We are quite as much interested in the settlement of the problem as 
the Jews themselves, for it involves more than the reputation of the 
apostle ; it involves the integrity of the Christian religion. If Paul- 
ine Christianity is a fungus growth or an antagonistic system, or orig- 
inal with Paul, we desire to know it, for the popular supposition is 
that it is merely an expansion of original Christianity. 

The scope of the problem is such that we must first understand 
what origiual Christianity is before we can ascertain if Pauline Chris- 
tianity is a perversion or no. Was Christ's religion, or system, Jewish 
in complexion, in essential truth, and in final design? Was he the 
founder of a new system of religion, or a reformer of the existing 
religion? In heralding him to the Jewish nation, John, the fore- 
runner, said, "Now also the ax is laid at the root of the tree" — 
not at the branches, but at the root ; he is not a pruner, but a de- 
stroyer. It is true he came not to destroy the law, but the gross par- 
aphernalia of Judaism and the inadequate parts of the system he was 
quite ready to overthrow. As a religion he was disposed to supplant 
it. Nowhere is he denominated a reformer or purifier of the old 
faith. The other John says, " The law was given by Moses, but 
grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." The two religions were dif- 
ferent, as their two personal exponents were different, and if conflict 
between them was not intended and was unnecessary, it grew rather 
out of the perversions of Judaism than out of the perversions of Chris- 
tianity. If Christ did not array himself against the old systems, and 
disclaimed a hostile motive for his career, its defenders antagonized 
him to the death, and so compelled their own overthrow. Without 
such antagonism it is possible that Judaism would have been trans- 
formed into the new faith, but it resisted transformation, reformation, 
and purification, and destruction was the dernier ressort of the Master. 
Jesus, therefore, pursues his career independently ; he teaches with 
authority ; he reveals truth according to his own wisdom and pleas- 
ure ; he demonstrates his power by occasional miraculous displays ; 



THE GOSPELS FRAGMENTARY. 427 

lie institutes a ministry, founds a Church, commits his message of re- 
demption to the world, and retires to wait until his soul shall be 
satisfied with the fullest achievement. 

Now, at his death, what truths do we find controlling the minds 
of the apostles ? What is the system of religion that appears after his 
three years of itinerant ministry ? Do we find every thing in it that 
is taught by Paul ? Is it a complete system of religion ? Was Paul 
needed at all ? No one can understand fully the merits of Christian- 
ity without canvassing these questions, as they bring to light some 
facts which must forever hush the cry of antagonism between Paul 
and Christ. 

What Christianity was at the ascension of Christ we can only 
know from the four Gospels, written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 
John. We can not accept suggestions from Jewish writers, nor will 
we infer any thing from the record of the epistles of the apostles 
themselves. Confined to the four Gospels, what was Christianity? 
No one will pretend to affirm that these Gospels are more than mere 
fragments of history, or that they contain more than the briefest re- 
port of the sayings and doings of Christ. Christ himself wrote 
nothing, save once on the ground, and that was never read, and what 
we have as his utterances came through others. We do not doubt 
the genuineness of the Gospels, but it is well enough to remember 
just what they are and what they teach. They are fragments, or the 
framework of Christianity. Besides this, they reveal no system of 
religion, no theological plan, no formal creed. We are prone to talk 
of systems and plans and theologies, but the Gospels are only sug- 
gestive of them — they are innocent of a system. The truth is from 
God, but the system of arrangement is always man-made. As in 
nature, so in religion. Scientific facts, truths, and principles are 
found in irregular masses and confused heaps and fragmentary forms 
everywhere — this is nature's method ; but sciences, as systems, are 
man-made. Take botany. Flowers, ferns, trees, are distributed over 
the globe promiscuously, but the botanist constructs the science of 
botany out of them. So zoology is a human structure, while the 
animals abound in all latitudes. In some such way, divine truths 
are imbedded in the Bible. They are without system or order of ar- 
rangement. In the Gospels, especially, there is no development of 
truth. Hints, scanty revelations, mere statements, great fragments — 
these are numerous, and very suggestive of what is beyond or un- 
derneath. At the same time, there are occasional complete, clear-cut 
statements, that are satisfactory and comprehensive. 

Now, it is out of this disorderly array of truths, these great hints, 
these fragments, that a consistent and orderly statement of what Chris- 



428 PHILOSOPHY AJSD CHRISTIANITY. 

tianity is must be made. Theology is the gathering up of this mass of 
truths, and putting them into order, and labeling them with definite 
names. The relation of theology to Christianity is the relation of zo- 
ology to the animal kingdom, and of botany to the flora of the globe. 
Paul was the first Christian theologian who undertook, under 
divine direction, to shape the utterances of the Teacher into a con- 
sistent whole, to form a Scriptural theology, and to employ terms 
and indicate relations that were in advance of what seemed to be in- 
herent in Christianity as laid down by the Founder. This grew out 
of the nature of the task itself, and was inevitable. But, as we shall 
see, between Christ as the Teacher, and Paul as the theologian or in- 
terpreter, there was no divergence, but a oneness of spirit and pur- 
pose that rather relates than divides them. 

Christ originated Christianity ; Paul formulated it. He took up 
the fragments, and they multiplied in his hands ; he caught glimpses 
of the unshapely masses of truth, and reduced them to order, and, 
in the reduction, developed them in all their proportions ; so that, in 
Paul's vision, Christ's truths seem, if possible, a little larger, if not 
more beautiful, than in their own author's hands. This, too, was in- 
evitable and necessary. Looking into the apostolic ranks, one can 
see that, of all men to undertake the analysis, development, applica- 
tion, or theological expression, of Christianity, as it came from "the 
Master's hands, Paul was the most fitted, by nationality, education, 
temperamental constitution, and inspiration. Prof. Fairbairn says, 
that " God made Paul for the moment, the moment for Paul." Of 
Jewish parentage, he had inherited the ancestral fervor and intense 
devotional spirit of the Hebrews; he was also, doubtless, proud of his 
social connections, and believed in the superiority of the old faith. 
Born in a Greek city, he came in contact with the Gentile world, 
and saw its wonderful needs and its wonderful capacities ; and as no 
other, he seemed able to bridge the great chasm between the Jews 
and the Gentiles. "In his single mind two races and two worlds 
met" — he was the instrument of both. In this broad relationship, 
Paul's fitness for the task of elaborating the great and folded truths 
of the new religion must rest. 

Just how great is the indebtedness of the Church to Paul, for his 
elaboration of doctrine, can not be measured, except by a survey of 
the particulars of the elaboration. In this it will be discovered that 
he departed not from the original teachings of the Master, nor sug- 
gested any thing that had not been previously taught, and left in a 
sketchy or fragmentary form. Paul's work was completed in thirty 
years after the scene on Calvary — his epistles written, his great mis- 
sionary tours accomplished, his religious assault upon the household 



PAUL'S LOYALTY TO JESUS. 429 

of Csesar effected, and his death outside the city of Eome a veritable 
fact — a time too short for the introduction of a religion different 
from that that had been announced ; a period scarcely long enough 
to even corrupt the teachings of the Church, which were well un- 
derstood even before Paul's conversion. Moreover, Paul's highest 
interest centered in Christianity as he had received it. His re- 
markable conversion could have no other effect than to win him over 
to the support of the religion he had so maliciously opposed, and 
whose extinction he had sought to accomplish. Converted, saved, 
the instinct of gratitude would bind him forever to the Savior, and 
his greatest desire must have been to know more about him, and to 
glory in nothing so much as in Jesus, and him crucified. This inter- 
est would make him a friend, and not a corrupter, of the religion 
that had redeemed him. To suppose otherwise, or to allow for a 
moment that Paul undertook to establish a religion himself and sup- 
plant Christ, or that he went so far as to modify and reconstruct 
Christianity, so as to appear as great as the original Teacher, presup- 
poses some things that we should be loath to concede. It implies 
that Paul was a schemer, a man filled with an ambition to secure 
both power and fame, and that he would forsake one religion to be- 
come the founder of another, whenever opportunity offered. This 
presupposition is not in accordance with Paul's character, as it is de- 
scribed. The scheming, ambitious spirit is certainly not manifest in 
his abandonment of Judaism, which entailed the loss of estate, posi- 
tion, endowment, and social influence. Ambition is the source of 
restlessness and fluctuation of purpose, but Paul is an example of 
firmness truly admirable. Never does he waver in his loyalty to 
Christ ; never does he change his purpose to preach the Gospel ; 
never does he shrink at sacrifice; never does he hesitate, debate, 
cringe, apologize, or forsake the divine course before him. In this 
heroism, equal to that of Moses, and superior to that of the other 
apostles, there is not the slightest exhibition of ambition. 

What is decisive of the question is the fact that his marvelous 
successes, as an apostle, were along the original line of Christian truth, 
and because he stood forth as the defender of the character and mis- 
sion of Christ. On no other ground can his historic career be ex- 
plained. It was Christ in him that gave him triumph throughout 
Achaia. What was it that made him the successful antagonist of 
Judaism ? Surely not a religion of his own, but the Christianity of 
the period. What was it that carried him from the isles to the conti- 
nents, that led him to brave all danger, and to be fearless in death? 
Surely not that he might be the founder of a new faith. He dis- 
claims all such pretensions when he says, " Was Paul crucified for you ?" 



430 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

"Who then is Paul?" His great career is built upon his devotion 
to Christ, and not upon an independent purpose of his own, and the 
greatest injustice is done him even to suspect him of a purpose to 
originate a religion himself, to say nothing of the injury done to 
Christianity by supposing that the Pauline form of it is different from 
its original form. 

We shall now examine Paul's specific elaboration of Christian 
doctrine, showing that it is in no sense a departure from what 
Christ himself taught. We begin with the greatest notion of 
theology, the largest thought of the Scriptures, the being and char- 
acter of God. Prior to the revelation of God through Christian 
teachers, the world's idea of Deity was dismal, obscure, unsatisfactory 
in the extreme. Outside of the Jews, that idea was mythological, and, 
therefore, unreal. Zeus was a mythological creature. Among the Jews 
the idea took a personal form, and yet God was banished from or 
had not taken personal relations. He dwelt in the dark, he was un- 
seen, he was heard on Sinai, or manifested himself in a moving cloud, 
or through a solitary code. The Jewish people had no intercourse 
with Deity. They spoke of him as a Father, but distant ; as a law- 
giver, but severe in enforcement ; as a leader, but pitiless and un- 
merciful. The best Jewish idea was a gross mixture of unpaternal 
and paternal conceptions. God was far off. In this atmosphere -the 
Jew dwelt, and out of it into a better there was no way until the 
Christ came, one of whose stupendous purposes was to bring God 
nearer to humanity and in more sympathetic relations to the race. 
He was styled Emmanuel, or God with us, and Christ said to Philip, 
" He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." This revelation of 
God in Christ was to destroy mythology, and show wherein the Ju- 
daic conception fell short of the whole truth, and so bring the world 
closer to God, as it had brought God nearer to man. The purpose 
was realized in the incarnate life of Jesus Christ, which should have 
been recognized by the Jews. That it was not is evident from their 
crucifixion of Christ. That it was not is proof that so blinded were 
the Jews to spiritual truths, a subsequent elaboration of the great 
fact was indispensable. At this point Paul's work begins, and right 
heroically does he perform it. Nowhere does it appear that he con- 
tradicts the assumption of Christ, but everywhere he proclaims him 
as the Son of God, the power of God, the wisdom of God ; every- 
where he proclaims that Jesus is Lord, the equal of the Father, to 
be honored and worshiped as the Father ; everywhere he declares 
that Jesus is the Christ, that by him were all things created, that he 
is before all things, and that all things are put under his feet. Christ 
is general, Paul is specific; Christ is universal, Paul is particular; 



PAULINE CONCEPTIONS OF CHRIST. 431 

Christ claims to be Father, Paul asserts that he is Creator, Upholder, 
Benefactor, Lord, and Ruler. 

But in this Pauline amplification of the Deity of Christ there is 
nothing not implied in and required by the position that Christ as- 
sumed for himself. The claim of William to be king cf Germany 
includes all that the title and position imply, without specifying the 
particulars. Christ intended all that Paul has so minutely affirmed. 
The apostle was an analyist, dissecting the darkest mysteries, pene- 
trating to the essence of the divinest sayings, unfolding the narrow- 
est promises, and expanding into life-likeness the -smallest forms of 
truth. Who charges that Paul transcended the prerogatives of his 
position, or gave to Christ's words a meaning foreign to them? In 
the same methodical manner Paul writes of Christ himself, loading 
him down, as it were, with new titles, and inventing phrases descrip- 
tive of his character and work that could not have been born in a 
mind not in entire sympathy with its subject. It is along this line 
that Jewish writers are disposed to urge their strongest objection to 
Pauline Christianity. They must concede that the Pauline devel- 
opment of the idea of God's character is correct ; but in the attempt 
to demonstrate that Christ is the Messiah and Redeemer, they in- 
sist that Paul went beyond what Christ himself warranted. This, 
therefore, deserves to be noticed, for it is the dividing line between 
Christianity and Judaism, and it is vehemently asserted that Paul 
is responsible for the division or breach. What did Christ claim for 
himself? Did he not assume to be the Messiah ? Did he not always 
represent himself as the Savoir? Are we mistaken here? Did not 
the prophecies receive fulfillment in him? It is a broad question — 
Is Christ the Messiah in truth, or is he the figure-head, the product 
of Pauline Christianity ? What find we in the Gospels ? He for- 
gives sins; he works miracles; he invites men to come unto him for 
rest ; he says he is the way, the truth, and the life ; in Nazareth he 
declares Isaiah to be fulfilled in him ; his parables are disguised rep- 
resentations of his Messiahship ; he predicts his crucifixion and the 
atonement ; he appeals to his works ; he lives, labors, dies, all to 
to make sure that the world may be saved. It is difficult to take 
any other view when reading the four Gospels. Now, did Paul go 
beyond this ? Did he not represent Christ in all his offices so fully 
that no one can charge him with ambiguity or insufficiency, and yet 
in the elaboration did he draw a single conclusion, or enforce a single 
statement not authorized by the Gospels themselves? With Paul 
Christ had the pre-eminence. Wherever he went he was present in 
spirit, and proved that Jesus is the Christ; that is, the Messiah; 
and everywhere he was anxious to declare that Jesus Christ came into 



432 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the world to save sinners. It seems to have been given Paul to dis- 
cern the great offices of Christ as no other had discerned them, and 
he dwells upon them with intensest enthusiasm, producing conviction 
in the multitudes, and terrifying even the rulers of all countries. John 
exalts Christ as divine, but Paul exalts him as the wonderful Savior. 
If, indeed, there is a "plan of salvation," we are indebted to Paul 
for the statement of it. The Gospels reveal Jesus as the Savior, but 
Paul expatiates on the method by which salvation is secured. He is 
the great logician of the New Testament, and he often aimed to 
prove how God could be just, and yet the justifier of him who be- 
lieved in Jesus. Paul reduced his theology on this subject to a science. 
He not only preached the Gospel, but proved it. The whole idea 
of salvation in Jesus Christ received logical treatment at his hands. 
His epistles are burdened with arguments in support of it. The 
necessity of redemption ; the inadequacy of the Judaic system ; the 
prophetic mission of Christ ; the divinely sustained character of 
Christ ; the impregnable fact of the resurrection of Christ ; and the 
certainty of salvation in Christ, arising from his own unanswerable 
experience of it, constituted a few of the points on which the apos- 
tle rejoiced to speak and write. Paul amplified, but did not originate, 
modify, or pervert Christian doctrine. 

If we consider Christ's teachings concerning man, his natural con- 
dition, his spiritual possibilities, his depravity, and the necessity of a 
regenerating change, and then study Paul on the same line of 
thought, we shall find perfect harmony, the latter but the echo of 
the former. Christ knew what is in man, and taught his greatness 
when he asked the famous question, " What shall it profit a man if 
he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" He showed 
his estimate of humanity by himself taking its form and living among 
men for a generation. " The word was made flesh and dwelt among 
us." The incarnation, on one side a humiliation of the divine, was 
on the other a glorification of the human, and declared to the uni- 
verse the infinite worth of man. Then his death for man, and atone- 
ment for his sins, is proof that in the mind of Christ man is inex- 
pressibly valuable, and must be redeemed, even if it cost the treasures 
of heaven. We affirm that the life and death of Christ, without 
mentioning particular acts or particular teachings, demonstrate quite 
as much the loftiness, majesty, and dignity of human character as the 
benevolence and virtue of the divine character of Jesus. 

In this estimate of humanity does Paul surpass Christ? Does he 
teach any thing different, any thing contradictory? Or do we not 
find that he repeats, only in another form, just what Christ himself 
had taught ? The Pauline exaltation of man is not mythological, is 



SHIPWRECK OF THE RACE. 433 

not exaggerated fancy, is not different from that of Christ. If he 
does write that man was made a little lower than the angels, that 
Adam was formed, not generated, it is because he truly antici- 
pated the ''development" theory eighteen hundred years in advance 
of it, and blocked its way by the announcement of the high-born 
origin, the creation of man. If he writes that " when I was a child 
I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child ; but 
when I became a man I put away childish things," it is because he 
saw the evolution theory true- as applied to man's development in 
knowledge. As to man's origin, he was a creation ; as to his history, 
he is a development. Evolution is false as applied to origin ; true, 
as applied to history. But is this anti-Biblical ? Is this new to Chris- 
tianity ? Is this Pauline construction of man singular and apostate ? 
Nay, rather it is in keeping with Christ's ideal of humanity, both as 
to origin and character. 

So, when we pass to man's dishonored moral condition, the two 
teachers are in perfect accord. Surely no one will insist that Jesus 
\nisunderstood this condition, or misinterpreted it, or failed to reveal 
it. It was he who said, " The Son of Man is come to seek and to 
save that which was lost." The ground of his coming was the fact 
that man was not only in immediate danger of perishing, but in a 
sense had already perished ; that he was not liable to be lost, but is 
lost. His mission was not to prevent destruction, but to deliver from 
it. This of itself indicates a want of righteousness in man too appall- 
ing to be fittingly portrayed. In all his teachings, plannings, and 
works the underground thought seems to be the painful recognition 
of the moral disabilities of men, the shipwreck of the race. It is not 
the ship in the storm, but the ship gone down in the storm. This is 
the picture, and it saddened the heart of the Son of Man as he 
contemplated it. 

In announcing the mission of Jesus to Joseph the angel said, 
" He shall save his people from their sins." Sin is in the way, salva- 
tion is a necessity, and Jesus is the Savior. The great fact of sin is 
revealed by the biographer of Christ as the burden that he would 
roll away, and he often forgave sin to show his power and indicate 
his mission. One sick of the palsy he both healed and pardoned ; to 
the woman taken in adultery he extended forgiveness; and to the 
woman who entered the house of a Pharisee he offered the word of 
pardon. He cast out devils frequently, illustrating his purpose to 
cast the evil spirit out of the hearts of men. He lived and died that 
he might reveal and perfect the way for man's rescue, and restoration 
to a normal spiritual condition. 

The Pauline epistles are not more specific touching these things 

28 



434 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

than the Gospels themselves. Paul, however, discourses on deprav- 
ity, or the ruin of man, revealing human helplessness to a degree 
startling and decisive. He declares that men are ' ' dead in trespasses 
and sins," and in his Epistles to the Romans and Galatians he shows 
the antagonism of the spirit and the flesh, proving how completely 
man is under the dominion of sin until he is brought under the do- 
minion of grace, and even then how the flesh lusts against the spirit, 
until, through the sanctification of the truth, man has complete rest 
from its power. Expatiating on this condition, he turns to the neces- 
sity of a Savior, and finds that Jesus Christ came into the world to 
save sinners. Over this he rejoices, and declares he will glory in 
nothing save the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul does not 
originate the doctrine of depravity, nor does he promulgate the atti- 
tude of Christ as a Savior for the first time. These are facts funda- 
mental to the biographical Gospels, and are the authentic testimony 
that they were taught by Christ, and they would remain even if Paul 
had not alluded to them. Both recognized man as a sinner, and both 
proclaimed Christ as the Savior. 

Concerning the doctrine of regeneration, or Christian experience, 
and the witness of the Spirit, Christ precedes Paul, as he does on every 
other doctrine. In his conversation with Nicodemus, Christ declares 
for regeneration, and this by the Spirit. In his Epistle to Titus, Paul 
speaks of the " washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy 
Ghost." Both teach spiritual regeneration. Christ promised the 
Spirit that he would come and guide unto truth, convict men of sin, 
and dwell in his disciples, revealing the things of Christ to them. 
Paul writes of a spiritual religion, saying that " the Spirit beareth 
witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." 

It is here that Christianity divides with Judaism, and, indeed, 
with all other religions. In its intense spirituality, in its independ- 
ence of material machinery, in its spiritual truths, spiritual precepts, 
spiritual experiences, and spiritual destiny, it is lifted far above other 
religions. Breaking away from ceremonies, feast-days, and all the 
visible display of Judaism, Paul entered into the spiritual conceptions 
of Christianity, enforcing them upon the attention of the Jews by sac- 
rifices, by zeal in their behalf, by benevolence, by tenderly uttered 
sympathies, by unparalleled services. It was this change from the 
visible to the invisible, from the physical appendages or externalism 
of religion to its spiritual essence and power, that the Jews did not 
understand, and that irritated them to the last decree. Paul empha- 
sized the spiritual elements ; he saw that every tiling else in religion 
must be subordinate to its spiritual aim ; and hence, crude enough as 
Christianity appeared in the hands of the fishermen, under Paul it 



RESURRECTION INTERPRETED. 435 

assumed a spiritual tone, and rose at once into a spiritual religion. 
But this was its appointed function, as it was spiritual in nature. 

Earlier, when the apostolic mind was slow to apprehend spiritual 
ideas, Christ did not develop them. He, however, deposited them, 
and they afterward germinated under Pauline cultivation. The acorn 
had become a tree, but not a different tree from what the acorn indi- 
cated. Paul, as a teacher of Christianity, had an advantage over the 
apostles, and made large use of it in his advocacy of the religion of 
the Master. One may embrace Christianity as a system of truth, and 
defend it on logical or rational grounds, without an experience of 
its power, or a knowledge of its possibilities. He may finally acquire 
an experience, but it is better to begin with an experience and advo- 
cate from that standpoint, than to begin with logic and end with ex- 
perience. The apostles had their experience last, and Paul had his 
first. To them Christianity was a new religion, doctrinal, personal 
in that it had a recognized founder, but more of a philosophical 
system that had to be tested and proved. To Paul, it was from the 
beginning an experimental religion, spiritual, personal, persuasive, 
powerful, adapted to human needs, and sufficient unto salvation. 
They preached the truth, he preached an experience. He is the only 
apostle who relates his experience, and he relates it to governors and 
priests and officers and the multitude, and great is the power that at- 
tends it. This is just what Christ contemplated, an experimental, spir- 
itual Christianity, eclipsing the material religions of the times and draw- 
ing men into the refinement and purity of something better. But in 
this we do not see that Paul is a usurper, or that he teaches what Christ 
did not contemplate, or that Christian experience is not an essential 
doctrine of the Scriptures, nor the blessed privilege of the believer. 

Passing into eschatology, we have no reason to believe that the 
Pauline epistles contain any thing not warranted by the Gospels ; or, 
that their author pretended to be an independent reader of things 
future. On the contrary, we discover the utmost harmony between 
them, and are thankful for the additional light Paul has shed on some 
of the problems that must finally confront all men. Touching the 
resurrection of the body, Christ announced it, not as an entirely new 
thought, for the Pharisees already held to it, but he made it more 
prominent as a doctrine than it was in Judaism. Martha expressed 
belief in the resurrection of Lazarus at the last day. This was 
Phariseeism, and this also was Christianity. Both to substantiate his 
power, and to foreshadow the possibility of a general resurrection, 
Christ raised three persons from the dead, Lazarus being one of them. 
He sometimes spoke of persons coming up out of their graves, and 
promised to raise the disciples at the last day. Resurrection ! If it 



436 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

did not seem like an original doctrine with Christ, it was because the 
people were already familiar with it. But Christ did not explain the 
resurrection, nor relieve it of mystery, nor answer the difficult 
questions it raises. The only mystery growing out of the resurrection 
that he shed light upon was with reference to the marriage relation in 
the future state in answer to a question by the Sadducees ; but that 
had reference to the resurrection-life, rather than to the resurrection 
itself. From Christ we also learn that the resurrection will occur at 
the, last day, and yet he is not specific. Whether it shall be the event 
that shall close up the present dispensation, or signal the end of the 
world, or whether there will be a period between the resurrection 
and the end, he does not intimate. And concerning two resurrections 
he is equally silent. How it is to be accomplished, whether it will 
be gradual or instantaneous, and with what bodies the dead shall come 
he does not discuss, he does not reveal. Perhaps all these questions 
were satisfactorily disposed of in dialogue with the apostles, so thai; 
they declared the resurrection with understanding wherever they went,, 
but the Gospels are barren of information. 

Evidently the Church craves information in all these directions, 
whether wisely or not is another question. In all ages of the Chris- 
tian era men have asked questions, and in Paul's time there was a 
disposition to deny the resurrection. This denial Paul had to meet, 
and providentially it led him into a discussion of the subject in many 
of its phases, especially with reference to the character of the resur- 
rection body, and the time of the resurrection, the two factors over 
which the greatest anxiety has suspended. Christ's revelation of the 
fact of resurrection was all that was necessary; Paul's discussion of 
the character of the resurrection was opportune and supplemental. 
For ages the thought of a material resurrection, the natural body re- 
appearing in all its numerical proportions, flesh and blood again 
revivified, the physical man fully restored, was accepted as the 
genuine interpretation of the Scriptural idea of resurrection. To this 
interpretation, however, numerous and cogent objections have been 
raised, both by those who denied the resurrection, and by those who 
believed the Scriptures. The drift of the Christian mind in the 
early centuries was toward crude material conceptions of spiritual 
truth, and a physical resurrection was the outcome of exegesis, 
and the instrument of terror or hope as it was applied by theologians 
to sinners and saints. Out of this fog the Church seems to have ad- 
vanced, but it is because of Paul's teaching. Christianity is spiritual. 
Even so literal a fact as resurrection is spiritual. The natural body is 
sown, but a spiritual body is raised. For the soul in this life there 
is a natural, a physical body ; for the coul in the other life there is a 



IMMORTALITY DISCLOSED. 437 

spiritual body. Flesh and blood can not inherit the kingdom of 
heaven. How clear such a statement ! The wonder is that any con- 
fusion ever existed on a subject that was lifted into transparency by 
apostolic revelation. 

So with reference to the time of the resurrection. Paul takes a 
small gold leaf, and hammers it out until in its expanded state it 
covers a great deal of ground ; that is, it makes clear what before 
was almost an ambiguous hint. He declares that ' ' the Lord shall 
descend, . . . and the dead in Christ shall rise first." Paul is 
as definite in eschatological as in soteriological teaching ; he is reliable 
and invaluable. Without quoting further, it is evident that in the 
mind of Paul the second coming of Christ and the resurrection of 
the dead will be simultaneous events ; that one purpose of the next 
coming will be to raise the dead. This certainly is definite informa- 
tion. Moreover, in his Epistle to Timothy, he says: " I charge thee, 
therefore, before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the 
quick and the dead at his appearing" — second coming, resurrection, 
and judgment here affirmed as events in close order. Other passages 
are at hand confirming the general revelation on this line ; but as they 
will be considered later we omit them in this connection. Resurrection 
and judgment are associated together in this passage. Paul's revela- 
tions are like an extensive panorama, which, beginning with hints and 
promises, opens out into vast vistas of scenery, alike gratifying and com- 
plete. Surely Paul has rendered a service to the Church, both by ex- 
planation of obscure truth and revelation of things not before revealed. 

Concerning immortality, there is the same straightforward state- 
ment from Paul as is manifest in all his utterances touching revealed 
truth. Christ, indeed, assured the disciples of another life, and re- 
vealed both heaven and hell by parable and direct teaching, so that 
he should not be misunderstood ; but Paul takes up all these primary 
revelations and elaborates them into fullness. With him there is no 
uncertainty. Immortality is a fact. He answers Job's question, 
"If a man die shall he live again?" by declaring that all men must 
appear before the judgment-seat of Christ to give an account for the 
deeds done in the body. In his preaching to Felix and Agrippa, he 
announced the future in such terms as to strike terror to the hearts 
of his pagan judges. Contemplating his own departure, he spoke of 
the joy immortal before him, saying : " To live is Christ, but to die 
is gain." Then, passing to the rewards and retributions of eternity, 
he is as outspoken as the Master, and as full in his statements. 
Christ promises mansions, and Paul speaks of " the house not made 
with hands eternal in the heavens." Christ promises a reward even 
to those who are late in entering the kingdom. Paul glories in 



438 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

crowns that shall never fade away. Christ tells of Dives and Lazarus, 
the beggar; while Paul discloses the banishment of the wicked to the 
horrors of Tartarus, and the triumphs of the righteous in the Para- 
dise of God. The two teachers are one on immortality, and agree 
concerning the judgment-seat, and the final issues of the judgment. 
One looks as far into the future as the other. Christ restrains him- 
self in revelation, foreshadowing the whole by parable and teaching ; 
Paul is palsied in utterance, telling all he can ; and in the end both 
stand on the same level as teachers of the same truth, as comforters 
of the children of men. 

In this brief survey of Paul's work we see how true he was to the 
Master's teaching on all subjects. He derived what he taught from 
original sources. He never appears as the supplanter, but as the 
supplemental teacher. We see, also, how much the Church is in- 
debted to him for faithful exposition of truth in itself beyond human 
delivery, and dark until made transparent by him. We see how un- 
just the insinuation that he in any sense intended to become the 
founder of Christianity, and finally see that Paul without Christ was 
impossible. 



CHAPTER XX. 

PHILOSOPHICAL GERMS IN CHRISTIANITY. 

NOT a few agree with Wolf, that religious truth, however occult 
in itself, or from what source obtained, should rest on a philo- 
sophical basis, and meet the philosophical tests usually applied to all 
truth. Understanding Christianity, the most zealous dogmatist will 
not object to so reasonable a proposition, for it gives no undue ad- 
vantage to philosophy and involves no concession on the part of 
religion. Religion and philosophy are so closely allied in their aims, 
and are so similarly affected by final results, that one may expect to 
find religion in philosophy and philosophy in religion. Diverse in 
method and form of statement, they are not antagonistic systems, 
intending to destroy each other. 

In a very broad sense, it may be affirmed that religion, even in its 
crudest form, is philosophical; for the idea of religion is truth, and 
truth implies those fundamental questions with which philosophy has 
concerned itself since the human mind began to think. If truth is 
philosophical, it is also religious; and so soon as it is contemplated 
its religious and philosophical character appears. 

In a different sense, religion is philosophical in its adaptation to 



CONFLICT OF METHODS. 439 

the moral necessities of the race; that is, its greatest truths are so 
formulated as to be of efficient service in moral emancipation and 
spiritual discipline. For example, the existence of God is so ex- 
pressed in the sacred writings, that man rises to the conception of 
God as a Father, a Protector, a Guide, a Helper, a Teacher, which 
is an improvement over the single conception of God as a Creator. 
The single conception of philosophy of a Supreme Power as the in- 
augurator of cosmical order and life, expands in the Bible into a 
complex conception of that Power in all its manifold and personal 
relations to the children of men. In this enlargement of conception,' 
religion is still philosophical ; for the conception of causality involved 
in world-building is philosophical, but its development into a personal 
form involves religious revelation. The genesis of the conception is 
philosophical ; the consummation of the conception is religious, and 
of practical value to human life. In its philosophical form, it is 
morally useless ; in its religious form, it is inspiration itself. 

To the claim that Christianity is philosophical in content and pur- 
pose, an objection or two might be noted, more to vindicate the claim 
than to silence the objection, although the latter disappears as the 
former is established. Philosophy proceeds on the assumption that, 
as its data are wholly within the realm of the natural, the methods 
of investigation pursued must also be natural, and the results, there- 
fore, will be natural ; while Christianity, compassing the supernatural 
as well as the natural, assumes that its methods of investigation may 
be supernatural as well as natural, and the results will correspond; 
in other words, one largely proposes natural methods and natural 
truths, the other, supernatural methods and supernatural truths. 
One opposes the supernatural as a method, in proportion as the other 
insists upon it. 

Christianity is a religion of inspiration, of supernatural truth; it 
comes not forth as the product of human inquiry, research, or dis- 
covery. Without the same ground, all religions profess to be more 
than human, incline to the claim of supernatural content ; so that the 
objection makes against all religions, if it makes against any. It 
strikes at the foundation of all. If, for the ascertainment of truth, 
the supernatural method is ruled out as unphilosophical, it remains 
that a knowledge of supernatural truth is impossible, which leads to 
agnosticism or open infidelity. By natural methods, we arrive at a 
knowledge of natural truths ; by supernatural methods, we obtain a 
knowledge of supernatural truths. The method and the truth which 
it seeks are mated. A natural method and a supernatural truth 
would be unequally yoked together. 

Insisting that inspiration is essential to the communication of 



440 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

religious truth, it must not be forgotten that such truth has a hu- 
man as well as a divine side ; and the human phase of religion may 
be as philosophical as the human phase of philosophy itself. Leave 
out the highest truths, the supernatural phases of Christianity, and it 
will appear that the human elements are as philosophical in character 
as the same elements in philosophy. Much of the geology, chronol- 
ogy, astronomy, botany, and zoology, or the science of the Bible, be- 
longs to the human phase of revelation, or constitutes its natural 
elements, in contradistinction to those spiritual truths which constitute 
it a moral guide to the race. This division of truths into human and 
divine, or scientific and spiritual, while germane to outside religions, 
and an aid in explaining their errors, we shall not urge with reference 
to Christianity, since its spiritual truths are scientifically true, and 
its scientific truths sustain spiritual relations that will be manifest be- 
fore the end of this volume shall have been reached. Accepting 
both kinds of truth, as constituting the inspired record, and one 
kind as inspired as the other, it is evident that, if the inspirational 
method is unphilosophical as applied to one truth, it is unphilosoph- 
ical as applied to the other. If unphilosophical at all, the whole 
record goes — the scientific as well as the spiritual, the spiritual as 
well as the scientific. 

The difficulty will be very much reduced if the distinction between 
method and truth be observed, for, even if a supernatural method be 
objectionable to philosophy, a supernatural truth may be very accept- 
able ; that is, an inspired truth is not necessarily an unphilosophical 
truth, even though an inspired method for its ascertainment may be 
rejected as unphilosophical. Truth is truth, supernatural or natural; 
truth is truth, method or no method, supernatural method or natural 
method. Truth is not philosophical in proportion to its natural con- 
tent, but in proportion to its trueness, whether the content be natural 
or supernatural. All objection, therefore, to truth is unphilosophical; 
supernatural truth, as such, is as philosophical as natural truth. 

To the objection made against the supernatural method, we might 
be indifferent, since it is immaterial how one gets the truth, super- 
naturally or otherwise. The only duty is to get the truth. However, 
the supernatural method is as legitimate as the natural method, and, 
in the sphere of religion, more legitimate, for it is the only method 
by which a knowledge of truth can be obtained. Seeing that super- 
natural truth is not the subject-matter of discovery, but must be made 
known by revelation, if known at all, the inspirational method be- 
comes legitimate, and the whole system of religion deduced from it 
philosophical. If, then, revelation is not unphilosophical, the terms 
in which Biblical truth is formulated are not unphilosophical. We 



TRUTHS, NOT SYSTEMS. 441 

shall see this in a moment. Philosophy is given to logical processes, 
the analysis of inquiries, the details of proofs, and inferences from 
facts; and, if these fail, it resorts to rationalistic speculation and 
metaphysical hypothesis. Many of its conclusions are, therefore, 
conjectural; some of them are inharmonious with the axioms of 
religion ; a few are incoherent and absurd. At least in method, 
Christianity stands alone, reaching its conclusions without any cir- 
cumlocution of speculation, and even without the framework of a 
syllogism. Religious truth is the conclusion of the divine mind, without 
the intellective processes by which it is reached. The Bible is not 
a book of reasons, but a book of truths; it is not a book of spec- 
ulations, but a book of conclusions. It states truth, without the 
analysis of truth, without pushing off into latitudes not real. Chris- 
tianity is not speculative, it is not rationalistic, it is not metaphysic; 
it is truth, it is light, it is the sun. Whatever it is, the method by 
which it is what it is rises or falls with it. The two at last are in- 
separable. To strike at one is to strike at both ; to vindicate one is 
to vindicate both. 

Equally futile is the objection that Christianity, as found in the 
New Testament, is not a system of truth at all, but a medley of moral 
teachings or rules, and, therefore, violative of all philosophical order 
and unity. The charge that New Testament Christianity is unsystem- 
atized truth, we admit; the inference that, on that account, it is un- 
philosophical truth, we deny. For systematic theology, we must go 
outside the New Testament; for systematic Judaism, we must go out- 
side the Old Testament. Neither Judaism is reduced to system, nor 
Christianity, in the Book that reveals it. This is not unphilosophical, 
for the idea of philosophy is not system ; it is truth. Truth is one thing, 
system another. Any system is legitimate, provided it is the frame- 
work of truth ; but let truth come, even if it come without any system 
at all. System ranks with method, and both are below truth. Plato 
had no system ; at least no one has discovered it. Emerson is with- 
out system. Philosophy is systemless from beginning to end. It can 
not be otherwise. Truth precedes system, is the content of all sys- 
tem, and must first be given or found before system can be formed. 
Plato was after truth, not after system. Paul was after truth, not 
after system. The sum of philosophic investigation since the time of 
Plato is a number of half-truths, fragments of thought, arcs of ideas, 
and certain hints, that, taken altogether, might constitute a system. 
The New Testament writers have done more than the philosophers, 
for all the truths necessary to a complete system they have revealed ; 
all the doctrines, all the ideas, all the thoughts, necessary to the circle 
of Christian thought, are declared by them. What is wanted is 



442 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

assortment, combination, a theologic structure out of the materials at 
hand. It is like building a pyramid with the stone on the ground. 
Unfortunately for philosophy, it not only lacks system ; it also is 
wanting in the material necessary to an orderly, rational, and com- 
prehensive system of the highest truths. The chief question, then, 
is, not whether Christianity is a system of truth, but, is it truth? 

The answer to this question involves a brief analysis of the philo- 
sophic content of other religions, by comparison with which not only 
the difference between the true and the false will appear, but also the 
character of Christian truth will be made manifest. Beginning with those 
religions that antedate Christianity, or contemplating those that arose 
at a later period, we shall see that they grappled with philosophical 
problems even more than with those that are distinctively religious. 
Their aims were philosophical, not religious. This is true of Brah- 
minism, Buddhism, and the early Persian and Egyptian faiths. The 
diagnostic of the later pagan religions, such as Hindu Eclecticism, is 
almost exclusively philosophical. The impressive inference to be 
drawn from this patent fact is, that, because these religions dealt so 
largely with the philosophical aspects of truth, they failed as relig- 
ions. If this is a correct inference, it points out clearly the path 
religion is to pursue ; it declares that religious truth has a mission of 
its own, and that the philosophical aspect must be subordinate. Re- 
ligion makes shipwreck of itself if it is more devoted to philosophical 
experiment than the fulfillment of religious functions. The Hindu 
race took up very early the questions that Plato and his successors ex- 
pounded more rationally and beautifully, but why should the religious 
mind take to the philosophical investigation of religious truth? In 
the case of the Hindu this was a necessity, for what passed for truth 
was error ; it did not satisfy the intellectual demand ; it did not 
awaken the religious nature ; hence, the scholarly Hindu, wrecked by 
religion, sought the life-boat of philosophy. 

In its philosophical ventures, however. Brahminism was as com- 
plete a failure as it was in its religious teachings. Its mood toward 
truth of any kind was altogether unsatisfactory. It solved nothing ; 
it finished no intellectual undertakings ; it dissipated no darkness, 
either as a religion or philosophy. Its incarnations and regenerations 
are but scaffoldings of ideas, standing alone, without relation to genu- 
ine truth, except as all fragmentary conceptions may be considered 
adumbrations of final truth, as contained in the Christian religion. 
In its gropings it so often stumbled that at last it fell into the em- 
brace of an intense superstition, without self-illumination, and but 
slowly disposed to yield to light from outside. 

To the average Brahmin the Vedas are the source of inspired 



UL TEA-PANTHEISM. 443 

truth. He can not be persuaded that the Bible is superior to the sa- 
cred writings of his fathers ; he persuades himself that the Vedas 
preceded the Bible, and are the original sources of all truth. Many 
truths in the Vedas are found in the Bible. This is not a coinci- 
dence, but to unbiased minds a proof that the truths of the Hebrew 
writings early dominated Eastern thought, and impregnated the most 
superstitious religions. Without doubt the Vedas borrowed from the 
Bible ; the Bible borrowed nothing from the Vedas. Because of the 
borrowed divine truths in the sacred writings of the Hindu race 
Brahminism has survived the ages ; truth is a living force, and has 
maintained more than one erroneous religion. Pure error would im- 
mediately die, but, mixed with truth, it seems sometimes to be as 
immortal as truth itself. The divorce or separation comes at last, 
error fleeing, truth triumphing. Thus it will happen that truth will 
gradually separate itself from all error in paganism, and false relig- 
ions will be no more. 

Indebted to the Bible as the Vedas are for religious truth, they 
are not indebted to it for philosophical suggestions. Not that Brah- 
minism is barren of the philosophical spirit; on the contrary, it is 
excessively philosophical, and is original in its philosophical suggestions. 
This relieves the Bible of a load of responsibility, which a true re- 
ligion can not afford to carry. In their highest conceptions the Vedas 
descend to an undisguised pantheism, confounding creation with the 
Creator, blotting out all the distinctions between an independent, un- 
caused, eternal personality, and the physical work of his hands, and 
leaving the world destitute of personal rule, and without a federal 
government. The universe is God ; God is not in nature, but is nature. 
Brahminism means this as its ultimate teaching, no difference what 
metaphysical distinctions it draws respecting Deity, no difference what 
personal functions it allots to Brahma, Vishnu, and Seva. In its philoso- 
phy Brahminism is pantheistical. In this form it explains nothing and 
confuses every thing. It unites what forever should be separated, and 
separates what forever should be united. It demolishes the dis- 
tinction between cause and effect, overruling all laws of order, introduc- 
ing all the liabilities of chance, or the still more revolting consequences 
of fate in the government of the world. 

The weight of objection to this doctrine is that what is true in 
the philosophical sense is also true in the religious sense ; that is, if 
pantheism is philosophically true, it must be religiously true. It can 
not be true in philosophy and false in religion. Hence, Brahminism 
is pantheistical in the religious sense ; but a pantheistic religion is 
virtually a self-contradiction, as a pantheistic philosophy is an sh- 
surdity. Pantheism and prayer are incompatible ; pantheism and 



444 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

atonemeDt can not co-exist in any religion ; pantheism and forgive- 
ness are foreign to each other ; pantheism and providence are unre- 
lated ideas ; pantheism and revelation are inharmonious terms ; pan- 
theism and spiritual influence can not be made to agree ; pantheism 
and redemption are impossible. Pantheism is destructive of the con- 
natural elements of religion, and, therefore, can not stand for the 
religious idea ; it can not represent that which it subverts. 

In its teachings concerning matter Brahminism is as curiously 
involved in absurdity as it is in its teachings concerning God. 
Briefly, the Brahmin holds that matter is an illusion ; it does not ex- 
ist ; it is without substance. In this conclusion it is the parent of 
that form of modern philosophy known as transcendentalism, of 
which our Emerson is the exponent. The illusion theory is the car- 
dinal doctrine of a form of idealism, adopted by the Eleatics, and ac- 
cepted in these days by a coterie of thinkers around Boston and 
London. Thus the old has become the new, modern thought wor- 
ships an idea that had its birth on the banks of the Ganges three thou- 
sand years ago, and the Brahmin rejoices in the vindication. This 
philosophical interpretation of matter, applied religiously, leads to 
the rankest atheism ; for, if nature is God, and nature is an illusion, 
then God is an illusion or nothing. Pantheism on its religious side 
does not symbolize atheism, but on its philosophical side it can not 
avoid it ; it, therefore, is even more dangerous to the religious idea 
than any other known form of religion. 

Its teachings respecting the soul are equally incredible, and un- 
founded in history or experience. The soul is supposed to be a frag- 
ment of the Deity, to whom it returns when separated from the 
body, and in whom its individual consciousness is forever lost, or by 
transmigration it is permitted to assume new types and conditions of 
existence, from which it finally passes into the state of Brahm him- 
self. Religiously, this is repugnant to the moral sense ; philosoph- 
ically, it is without foundation, either in reason, experience, or 
observation. History records no such transmigrations, and in the 
nature of things they are impossible. Even if possible, they are in- 
consistent with the natural dignity of human character, and are out 
of harmony with the highest destiny of man. It is not our purpose 
to philosophize on the Vedic revelations, but rather to state them, 
believing that the inconsistencies of the Brahminical religion will ap- 
pear in these revelations, and that when Paul says the "world by 
wisdom knew not God," we may refer to this and all other false re- 
ligions for illustration and vindication. 

The same conclusion will be reached if we turn to Buddhism, a 
later religion of the East — in fact, a protesting religion against the 



BUDDHISTIC DEAD-WEIGHTS. 445 

vagaries of Brahminism. It was announced by Gautama in the 
tenth century before Christ, coming forth as a reformation or trans- 
migration of the religious idea, and with seeming providential guar- 
antees, and in the name of a divine authority. Brahminism was 
unsatisfying ; it was irrational ; it was wanting in inspiration ; it was 
a load. In his protestings, recommendations, and religious reve.a- 
tions one would suppose that Gautama would substitute activity for 
inertia, establish new methods of religious service, declare truths 
adapted to human necessities, ordain new religious forms and institu- 
tions, inhibit old, worn-out customs and practices, introduce new mo- 
ralities and philanthropies, and elevate moral life to a higher level. 

Here, again, disappointment is the result. What truths did it 
announce and what evils did it suppress ? What is the fruit of Bud- 
dhism ? With higher aims, is it certain that its uplifting power was 
any greater? Recognizing the superiority of some of its teachings, 
the total impression that this religion makes is that it did not disturb 
the moral inertia of history, or tend to the religious development of 
the race. The rule we apply in determining its historic place among 
religions, and its relative value as a religion, is not to inquire the 
specific value of any single truth it may have espoused, but to take 
the sum of its historic impression. It must be judged as a whole, and 
not by its parts. By this rule it ranks little above that against which 
it protested, and falls short of meeting the religious demands of the 
race. Tlwugh not quite so tortuous as ilvat of Brahminism, its course was 
equally narrow and shallow; though more refined, its conceptions were as 
confused and perplexing ; though more energizing in action, its final effects 
were relapses into insipidity and lethargy. 

The theistic notion it dealt with summarily by robbing the Su- 
preme Being of consciousness and personality, leaving only a Supreme 
Force, omnipresent and eternal, in possession of the reins of the 
world's government. It quickly sunk to the atheistic level, and is 
the parent of that scientific dictum of modern times which reduces 
all existences to the vibrations of force, and elevates it to supreme 
command in the universe. If the transcendentalism of modern times 
may be traced to Brahminism, the scientific hallucination of modern 
times concerning Force may be traced to Buddhism. Modern errors 
are the newly dressed dogmas of Oriental nations. 

In respect to matter, Buddhism put itself in a dilemma from 
which it has never been extricated. It proclaimed the eternity of 
matter, but was inclined to doubt the reality of matter. The Bud- 
dhist desired to break with the Brahmin at this point, but did not 
know how to do it. The theory of illusion is irreconcilable with 
the theory of eternity. Holding to the latter, the ancient Buddhist 



446 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

could easily have disavowed the former, and completed his separation 
from the Brahmin ; but he was not independent enough in thought 
to take the step, and so did not advance beyond the established re- 
ligious tradition. 

The Buddhist conception of man is as vulnerable as the Brahmin- 
ical conception, for it recognizes in him only a temporary individual- 
ity, to be lost in the life of the Infinite Force, which is regarded as 
the chief boon of mortals. Accepting the old doctrine of transmi- 
gration, the Buddhist looks forward to a period when re-embodiments 
in various forms shall cease, and conscious being be swallowed up 
in the greater activity of the Supreme Power. Individuality shall 
lose its crown in eternal self- forge tfulness. 

Philosophically and religiously, what is the value of Buddhism? 
It settled no philosophical question ; it threw no light on the aged 
darkness of truth ; it opened no new path to mystery ; it was a blind 
guide, leading the blind into errors as great as those it aimed to 
correct. As a religion its aim was purer than that of its rival, but it 
revealed no new truth ; and if it awakened new desires, it was as in- 
competent to satisfy them. The hopes it raised turned to ashes, and 
its music became a dirge. 

Forgetting the pagan faiths, and turning to other religions, with 
different aims, the investigator will find temporary relief from the 
nightmare which the former provoked. Temporary relief, we say, for 
all religions, except Christianity, are essentially false, notwithstanding 
their relation to the true religion, and the spiritual contents of their 
revelations. This is certainly true of Mohammedanism, which, far 
from being pagan in spirit or purpose, is as far from being Christian 
in content, design, or method. Measured carefully, it is as much in- 
ferior to Christianity as it is superior to paganism ; but its superiority 
on one side is more than balanced by its inferiority on the other. It 
is, therefore, an untruth, in that it is not more than a half-truth. As 
to its philosophical solutions, they are repugnant to the scientific 
sense, and contradictory of scientific fact ; and if, in any respect, 
they are an improvement on the Hindu conception of the universe or 
of matter, it is proof of the influence of the Hebrew Scriptures and 
of the spirit of the age on the mind of the great prophet, who was 
inaugurator of the new religion. The science of the Al Koran is 
" science falsely so-called," as it teaches that the earth is balanced by 
the weight of the mountains, and that shooting-stars are red-hot 
stones thrown by angels. If these were minor or incidental teach- 
ings, they would not be quoted ; but they reflect the character of the 
geology and astronomy of the sacred book of the Mohammedan, who 
is as much required to accept its science as its religion. 



THE ANTHROPOMORPHIC IN MOHAMMEDANISM. 447 

The strong or essential doctrine of Mohammedanism is its exposi- 
tion of the theistic idea, showing at this point its superiority to all 
pagan notions of the Supreme Being. Fortunately for the Oriental 
nations, Mohammedanism was a complete break from all the old re- 
ligions touching this fundamental truth, for Mohammed accepted the 
Old Testament as his guide, and represented God in his true charac- 
ter, as a personal being, endowed with all the attributes enumerated 
by Moses. This gave him advantage as a leader, which he was not 
slow to improve. The theistic idea was an improved idea, and had in- 
spiration in it ; and under its influence the multitudes joined him in his 
attacks upon idolatry, idealism, pantheism, and all the fancies of the 
old religions. It brought the East to its knees before God, who gov- 
erned all nations, who observed human actions, who would punish all 
wickedness, and reward all virtue. 

Persistent in the enforcement of this conception, as was Moham- 
med, the conception itself, as finally formulated, was compromised by 
an excess of anthropomorphic elements introduced into it ; it was low- 
ered to gross human standards of what God ought to be, and not 
what he is, as taught in the Scriptures. Determined to break with 
Christianity, as he had broken with Paganism, Mohammed rejected the 
doctrine of the Trinity, and stood out as an independent religious 
teacher, accepting only a few truths from the sources around him. 
He gained on the old religions by the doctrine of monotheism, but 
fell back from the new by his anthropomorphism and denial of the 
Trinity ; and to-day, as in his time, the faith he instituted is quite as 
much opposed to the new as to the old. 

If in like manner we should analyze the old religions ot Egypt, or 
question the ancient systems of belief in China, as to particular 
teachings respecting God, nature, and man, we should find that, 
holding to some truths that might be approved, and exhibiting a sin- 
cerity that ignorance always creates, they were defective in those 
truths that are essential to a perfect philosophy and a redemptive re- 
ligion. All religions, ancient and modern, would repeat the same 
story of imperfection, inadequacy, and incompleteness.. 

The sum of this survey of religions is that religion is instinctively 
philosophical, in that it grapples with philosophical problems, or, in 
better form, its connatural ideas are per se philosophical. The two 
can not be separated ; to be religious is to be philosophical. 

The conclusion is also warranted that, whatever their value as 
religions, they have failed in their philosophical departments, partiy 
owing to want of data, partly to irrational methods, partly to explain 
the mysteries, or state exactly what pertains to such departments. This 
failure is universal. No uninspired religion has developed a compe- 



448 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

tent philosophy; not one has solved one philosophical problem in a 
philosophical manner. From the philosophical departments of relig- 
ion have come the idealism, transcendentalism, pantheism, material- 
ism, pessimism, atheism, and those scientific heresies which modern 
science has appropriated and palmed off as its own. 

We finally conclude for the necessity, either of another philosophy, 
or another religion which shall philosophically succeed where others 
have failed, and demonstrate that man must go to that religion for 
his philosophy, rather than to outside philosophy itself. 

This brings us to the consideration of the philosophical character of 
Christianity, the only religion that meets the requirements of philos- 
ophy, and the only philosophy that suggests a true basis for religion. 
Before analyzing the radical elements of this religion, it will be 
necessary to take a general view of its relation to philosophy, that 
its exact position may be understood. First, Christianity is in its 
contents a system of religious truth; it is a religion; it is not a 
philosophy. We say this just as we say water is a liquid; it is 
not a gas. Philosophical truth abounds in Christianity, but in itself 
it is a religion; its purpose is religious, its methods are religious, 
its effects are religious. Second, Christianity is a philosophical relig- 
ion; it is the only philosophical religion among men. As we have 
seen, the metaphysical researches of other religions have been fruitful 
of deep-seated errors, involving unjust misconceptions of God, na- 
ture, and man, and have prevented moral and intellectual progress. 
Christianity holds not a religious truth that is not philosophically 
true ; its highest truths accord with the highest reason ; its philos- 
ophy harmonizes with its religion. Christianity harmonizes its ele- 
ments as nature harmonizes gases, liquids, and solids; the result is 
order, stability, development. Third, Christianity disposes of philo- 
sophical problems as it disposes of religious problems, namely, by 
revelation. Its religious truths are not more inspired than its philo- 
sophical, and its philosophical not more than its religious truths. 
The truth relating to the origin of the worlds, the creation of man, 
the range of the flood, and the final conflagration of the planets, is as 
much inspired as the truth relating to regeneration, prayer, faith, 
immortality, marriage, and the Sabbath. The difference is in the 
class of truths; the source is the same. Hence, the infallibility of the 
philosophical revelations of Christianity. By these philosophical 
revelations the religious revelations stand or fall ; for, if it can be 
shown that the one is uncertain and unreliable, discredit is also 
thrown upon the other. Fourth, Christianity is the final test of all sys- 
tems of philosophy. There must be a. final court of appeal, or truth 
is at the mercy of prejudice. Either Christianity must be tested 



COSMOLOGICAL TRUTHS. 449 

by philosophy, or philosophy must be tested by Christianity. If re- 
ligions may be weighed in her scales ; if all religious truth may be 
judged by her ideal standard of truth; if its own philosophy may be 
tested by its own religion ; surely philosophical systems, pretending to 
investigate that which primarily belongs to the domain of religion, 
must submit also to that religion whose tests are ideal and final. In 
another form it might be added that the final religion must originate, 
dictate, and enforce the final philosophy ; and then the two will per- 
fectly agree, and Christian philosophy will be the synonym of the 
Christian religion. . 

With this general understanding of the relations or kinship sub- 
sisting between philosophy and Christianity, it will be interesting to 
search for those final forms of philosophical truth that are concealed 
or disclosed in the Book of Kevelation. 

Among the common-place truths of Christianity is that which re- 
lates to cosmological history, or the creation and development of the 
universe. Without exception, the sacred writers reveal God as the 
philosophic ground of all existence, and explain the worlds by the 
principle of causality in association with personality. They recognize 
will, purpose, and power, in conjunction in the creation of matter 
and its organization into systems of worlds. This principle of cos- 
mology is the rubric of the Christian religion. Accepting this prin- 
ciple as the key to cosmological history, the Christian thinker has a 
starting-point ; he starts from God, the all-sufficient source. Imme- 
diately, he opens the door on one side into geology, and on the other 
into astronomy, arranging the facts of these sciences in harmony with 
the principle of causality, and explaining physical development by 
law ordained by the Establisher of all things. Neither philosophy 
itself, nor any pseudo religion, began at this starting-point. All be- 
gan with nature and aimed at God. Christianity begins with God 
and aims at the universe. 

This principle of cosmology involves the incidental factor of 
chronology, carrying us back to a period when, atomless, non-existent, 
and unanticipated by any antecedent, the worlds, were made by the 
power of God. Millions of years do not disturb the principle. Any 
chronology, long or short, doubtful or positive, may be asserted with- 
out shaking the principle. At one time the conservatism of Christian 
thought, or rather the importance attached to cosmological chronology, 
was such as to disallow this interpretation ; but Christianity is as 
scientific in its science as it is religious in its religion, and it sinks 
*the lower question into the higher, regarding the principle of creation 
more important than the chronology of creation. Over the chronol- 
ogy of the birth of the worlds there can be little contest between the 

29 



450 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

friends of religion on the one hand and the friends of philosophy on 
the other, since it is a subordinate question. In its narrow sense, 
world-birth is a geological question ; in a larger sense it is astronom- 
ical ; in the whole sense, it is theological, implying God himself and 
his relation to matter. Settled in any sense, however, it is settled in 
all ; for truth is a unit, and, given a key to the origin of any world, 
it will unlock the mystery of all worlds. 

An outside or secular philosophy, disregarding, the theistic hy- 
pothesis, has sought to explain the cosmic systems either by independ- 
ent processes, or by self-executing laws, or by the operation of " second 
causes," or at all events by a Power, impersonal, unconscious, and 
synonymous with the forces at work in nature. It is not charged 
that the nebular hypothesis and the "development" theory exclude 
the theistic idea, but they fall short of a full recognition of divine 
intervention in world-building, involving the subject in deeper 
mystery than is possible in the light of the Christian principle of 
cosmology. Christian belief has insisted on the exercise of creative 
power in the origin of matter, and the exercise of wisdom in the 
planning of the solar systems, and has been unfriendly to a compro- 
mise with scientific hypothesis along these lines. The difference 
involves on the one side the reign of personality in the universe, and 
on the other the self-potency and self-sufficiency of matter in the 
process of world-building. The issue compasses two extremes, or the 
opposite heights of the pendulum of human thought, from one of 
which we look upon all things as from a throne, and from the other 
of which we behold the universe as from a polar point. Scientific 
thought, recognizing the cheerlessness of the atheistic assumption, is 
rapidly veering toward the Christian principle of cosmology, and 
adapting its "development" theories to the Biblical revelations. 

Descending to the smaller questions of science, such as the Mosaic 
order of creation, the time of man's appearance on earth, the origin 
or introduction of language, and the law of heredity, as it affects the 
race, similar battles have been fought, but in a less violent spirit and 
without permanent disaster to the truth, for the settlement of the 
greatest problem signifies the settlement of all other problems. A 
theistic triumph is the triumph of all truth. Viewing the conflict over 
the lesser questions, one is impressed that the outside scientist has 
been assailing ecclesiastical interpretations rather than Biblical truths, 
and that neither ecclesiastic nor scientist has intelligently considered 
what those truths are, or at least has not sounded them to their 
depths, and has mistaken the direction of their currents. It may, 
therefore, be assumed that, as the old dogmatic interpretations are 
modified, and scientific theories are molded in the light of facts and 



GEOLOGICAL HYPOTHESES. 451 

Biblical hints, a reconciliation between philosophy and Christianity 
will take place, and the true result will be secured, namely, the 
Biblical stand-point of creation will have amplest vindication. Until 
this is realized, the chasm must remain, and unbelief touching the 
higher verities of religion will boast of its intrenchments and point to 
its victories. Contention over Biblical truth there will be ; but, as 
the testing of truth means the testing of error also, so an analysis of 
revealed truth will be followed by an analysis of all other so-called 
truth, by which error will at last be made transparent and the truth 
be set apart from it.. The conflict is in the interest of truth, and it 
ought to go on until the true shall be victorious over the false. 
Error can not long resist the truth, nor long abide after a defeat. 

As an example, it has been affirmed in certain circles that the 
geology of the Pentateuch is incomplete in detail and incorrect in its 
substantial facts ; yet no theorist proposes entirely to dispense with 
the Mosaic manual. This manual has been interpreted so variously 
that one is obliged to conclude that it is not a superficial document, 
or it would be interpreted in one way only, or be entirely rejected. 
The effort of the scientific mind is so to interpret the geological reve- 
lation as to harmonize with scientific discovery, the product being 
at least six theories, which are here noted : 1. The theory of Literal 
Agreement; that is, the chief geological divisions of the globe are 
supposed to agree with the six divisions of Moses. This is straight, 
clear, definite. 2. The Institutionary Hypothesis; that is, the geo- 
logical material existed before the inaugurated movements of the six 
days, and was arranged, or restored to order, beauty, and system dur- 
ing that period. The Mosaic "week" was a week of organization 
and reconstruction. 3. The Diluvian Hypothesis ; that is, the pres- 
ent geological order must be referred to the Deluge, the original order 
having been entirely subverted. 4. The theory of Ideal or Substantial 
Agreement; that is, the Mosaic account is true as a general repre- 
sentation, but is not scientifically accurate. 5. The Epochal theory; 
that is, the Mosaic "day" refers to an epoch in geologic movement. 
6. The Allegorical theory ; that is, the Mosaic account is the idea of 
development in a picture, the idea being more important than the 
facts, the picture more beautiful than the frame ; hence, the account 
is the narrative of an idea, and not the relation of facts. 

It will be observed that none of these theories, however widely 
they differ from one another, seriously antagonizes the Biblical account, 
or eliminates the Mosaic idea of creation ; as experiments at interpre- 
tation they are valuable, since they show that a truth may be looked 
at from many sides and not suffer from the inspection. One might 
accept any of the above interpretations, and be in harmony with 



452 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Moses. Many German thinkers take kindly to the theory of Sub- 
stantial Agreement, because of its elasticity, but this is the chief ob- 
jection to it; the Bible is never speculative, suggests no tentative 
theories or working hypotheses, does not state truth substantially, but 
positively and absolutely. If its geology is substantially true, its spir- 
itual teachings may be regarded as substantially true, which would 
open the door to speculation, fanaticism, superstition. Revelation, 
like mathematics, must be one thing or another. 

Whatever objection may be raised against the other theories, they 
are free from this weakness; they are positive, even if defective. 
But it is not so much to discuss theories as to show that the Penta- 
teuch has given rise to the prevailing philosophical explanations of 
the geological movements, or of the order of the creative week and 
its results. The Pentateuch is the source of geological truth. 

Passing from origins to destinies, Christianity is as prophetic as it 
is historic ; it points to the end as well as the beginning, surpassing 
philosophy in the one respect as it does in the other, and yet is 
strictly philosophical itself. Ordinarily, philosophic inquiry confines 
itself to the ascertainment of causes or beginnings; rarely does it 
consider effects or ends. A whole philosophy, however, must range 
from one to the other, and explain one as well as the other. Chris- 
tianity foresees the end of all things, declaring that the earth shall 
be burned up, reduced to a cinder, or purified and transformed by 
fire. This is a definite revelation, sustained, too, by nature itself, 
and, therefore, is doubly true. The earth is a store-house of com- 
bustibles, waiting for the torch of the last day, when the conflagration 
of the mountains and oceans will be immediate and universal. Oxygen 
is the great promoter of combustion, and is found in combination 
with the solids and liquids of the globe. The greater portion of sub- 
stances consists of this gas. Water needs only to be resolved into 
oxygen and hydrogen, when the oceans can be converted into roaring 
seas of flame. Besides, the interior of the earth is supposed to be a 
raging furnace of fire, sending out its forked tongues through volcanic 
craters and heated springs in testimony of its existence. The earth 
can burn ; its constitution affirms its possible destruction by fire. 
Astronomy records several instances of the conflagration of stars. 
Will it not by and by add to its record the conflagration of the earth ? 

This is the revelation of Christianity ; this is the prophetic possibility 
of nature. Does science accept it? In some quarters, the destiny of 
the earth has been under consideration, various theories having been 
presented, and all agreeing on the probable destruction of the globe. 
One theory is to the effect that the earth will freeze to death, the sun 
failing to supply it with heat; another is, that the earth is slowly 



CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOG Y. 453 

approaching the sun, or the sun the earth, and in time the earth will 
wheel into the orbit of the sun and be consumed. Some have pre- 
dicted its destruction by collision with comets or planets, and others 
that the laws which regulate its activities and secure its preservation 
will be suspended, and the earth fail with age and infirmity ; but its 
destruction, whether by one method or another, is now a conclusion 
of science as well as religion. Christianity reveals more than the 
fact of destruction; it declares the manner or instrumental cause of the 
destruction, which science now recognizes as probable. In this Chris- 
tianity does not sustain science, but science sustains Christianity. 

For a true philosophy of the cosmical system, which includes the 
genesis of matter, the origin of worlds, and the destiny of the uni- 
verse, or for a key to geology, chemistry, and astronomy, the investi- 
gator must first and last acknowledge his indebtedness to the revealed 
truths of Christianity, which, in their scientific content, are as rational 
as in their spiritual content, and, therefore, as serviceable to science 
as to religion. 

A turning-point is now reached. As the sphere of philosophy 
extends beyond the physical domain, so the philosophical in Chris- 
tianity embraces more than a category of physical truths. As nature 
is the key-word to all physical truth, so man is the key-word to all 
intellectual, if not spiritual, truth. Man stands for higher truth, as 
nature stands for lower truth ; and, by so much as he is greater than 
nature, by as much is the truth he represents greater than the truth 
of nature. Man thinks ; he has a conscience ; he recognizes moral 
distinctions ; he determines the difference between the me and the 
not-me. All the differences or idiosyncrasies, which distinguish 
human from brute intelligence, all those achievements which prove 
the superiority of man, and all those graces and virtues that lend 
dignity to human character, are proper subjects for the contemplation 
of the theologian and philosopher. What is man ? asks David. The 
answer of modern philosophy has been given in this volume. It 
strikes at the divine in humanity. The answer of Christianity is, 
that man is a twofold being ; he is constituted with a body which is 
physical and will perish, and a soul which is intellectual and spiritual, 
and, therefore, immortal; and these are mysteriously united for all 
the purposes of a brief time-life, and then separated, that the soul 
may enter into everlasting relations with another life. Such a view 
of man invests him with sacredness and nobility, and points to un- 
limited possibilities of development and achievement. On this founda- 
tion, man's place in nature, in the spiritual realm and in eternity, 
can be fixed, and a philosophy, building up on these premises, will 
abide. A true philosophy must recognize the intellectual in distinc- 



454 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

tion from the physical, and the immortal in opposition to the mortal. 
Epicurus denied the immortality of the soul, but Paul emphasizes it 
as one of the first principles of religion. Nor is this a religious truth 
only, to be accepted because revealed ; it is also a philosophical truth, 
which Plato demonstrated, and to be accepted because demonstrated. 
Immortality is as inherent as memory, imagination, conscience, or 
will; it is not a conferred gift, but an essential attribute of soul. 
The genesis of soul is the genesis of immortality. 

The philosophic spirit of Christianity is manifest in its recognition of 
the reign of evil in the universe, and in the revelation of a positive method 
for its extinction. Homer does not use the word "sin," or any equiv- 
alent, in the Iliad, for, to the ancient poets, and the fable-makers, 
wrong-doing was a trifle, in some instances it was godlike, for did not 
the gods commit crimes? While philosophy struck mythology from 
history as a baseless fabric, and condemned its ethical notions as ab- 
surd and injurious, it can not be said that philosophy occupied a 
safe ethical ground, or that it comprehended all that is involved in 
the existence and reign of evil. If to the ancient philosopher 
mythology was fiction, to the Christian thinker of to-day Manicheism 
and Gnosticism, as ; philosophical explanations, appear equally untrue 
and inapplicable. What then ? Christianity reveals the philosophy 
of evil, not in a mythological way, not as a speculation, but as it re- 
veals all truth, by the declaration of its character, as the opposite of 
holiness, and by the declaration of its origin in a spirit of disobedi- 
ence to the law of righteousness. It does not locate evil in matter, 
but defines it as the abnormal condition of mind, as enmity to law. 
As an act, evil is the voluntary flow of mind in a forbidden channel ; 
as a result, it is the disorder consequent on disobedience. 

The ethical remedy of Christianity is atonement, forgiveness, and 
regeneration ; a remedy as philosophical as it is religious, because 
available and sufficient. 

Christianity is philosophical in its biological principles. The principle 
of life is a profound secret, the scientist being as ignorant of it as 
the average theologian. Life is invisible ; its manifestations we alone 
can observe and know. Still we know there is such a something as 
Life, or something that we call Life. Now, it would be dogmatic in 
the Christian thinker to announce that Christianity makes a full ex- 
position of life, or that it resolves its chief mystery, and dissipates 
all the darkness which invests it ; it does not clear the subject, but it 
throws a halo around it ; it does not explain its essence, but it con- 
ducts to its source. 

Christianity is not azoic in any sense ; it is Life, because its 
Founder is Life. To him all life may be traced, and from him all 



KEY- WORDS OF CHRISTIANITY. 455 

life has come ; but the mystery of life still remains. The universe is 
the embodiment of a principle of life, which is called Energy ; the 
human race is the embodiment of a principle of life, which is called 
Salvation ; and one is as philosophical as the other. Philosophy 
recognizes the one ; Christianity imports the other. The law of bio- 
genesis, or life from pre-existent life, or lower life impregnated with 
higher life, reigns in the physical universe and accounts for its de- 
velopment ; the same law reigns in religion, accounting for Regener- 
ation, and all the mysteries of spiritual development. Physical 
development and spiritual development are under the same law of 
life. Hitherto spiritual life has been interpreted by the scientific 
thinker as a sentimental condition, independent of natural laws, and 
secured, if at all, by supernatural influences which science knew 
nothing about and whose existence, therefore, it was inclined to im- 
peach. But biogenesis is as much a law of the spiritual realm as of 
the natural ; regeneration is as natural as it is spiritual ; and the 
life of the universe is only the symbol of the life of the eternal 
world. Christianity is the true philosophy of biological law. 

In like manner, it may be shown that Incarnation, Atonement, 
Justification, Sanctification, Faith, Joy, Liberty, and Prayer, are 
philosophical principles, or philosophical conditions, realized by philo- 
sophical methods, and manifested in a philosophic order in the 
Christian life. That is to say, whatever Christianity is, it is philo- 
sophical; whatever Christianity does, it does philosophically; what- 
ever mysteries it withholds, they are philosophical mysteries ; what- 
ever revelations it submits, they are philosophical revelations. 

If nature is the key-word to physical truth, and man the key- 
word to intellectual truth, God is the key-word to spiritual truth, to all 
truth, physical, intellectual and spiritual. God is the key-word to 
nature, man, and himself; the key to the secrets of the universe, 
the key to the treasures of the spiritual world. Philosophy has sadly 
erred in trying to open the doors without the key ; it has not opened 
them. Christianity opens all things, explains all forms, reveals all 
laws, and is the sum of all truth. As in philosophy the greatest 
problem is God, so in Christianity the greatest revelation is God. 
Christianity is the revelation of God. It is not a problem ; it is a 
revelation. It is not a theory ; it is a truth. As a truth it is more 
philosophical than a theory, for, while philosophy runs to theory, it 
ought to be grounded in the truth, which truth is Christianity. The 
theistic truth of Christianity embraces all other truths ; hence, the 
revelation of one is the revelation of all. On this highest truth a 
philosophy is possible ; on this highest truth a religion is possible ; 
on this highest truth the unity of philosophy and religion is possible. 



456 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Philosophy without Christianity is uncertain, and its discoveries 
must be partial and accidental ; Christianity without philosophy is 
truth without theory, and must abide forever. Christianity is 
philosophy. 



CHAPTER XXL 

CHRISTIANITY THE KEY TO THE PHENOMENAL 

WORLD. 

GIORDANO BRUNO, an Italian philosopher of the sixteenth 
century, represented the world as a "living being," with reason 
as its regnant faculty. Gorgias, the ancient Sophist, imbibed the 
Eleatic notion of the non-existence of matter, declaring that nature 
is without reality. Horace Bushnell, adopting the etymological sug- 
gestion of the word "nature," as something about-to-be, speaks of it 
as " that created realm of being or substance which has an acting, 
a going on, or process from within itself, under, and by its own 
laws." Pascal affirms that "nature is an image of grace;" and 
Henry Drummond undertakes to establish the identity of natural and 
spiritual laws, or that the Religious and Natural realms are under the 
same code of laws. 

These differences in opinion respecting the physical world make 
it clear that a purely philosophical explanation of matter will be un- 
satisfactory, and also, that a religious theory, unless fully buttressed 
by revealed truth, can not hope for recognition. It is not sentiment, 
it is not theory, that is wanted. It is truth, and truth only, that 
will satisfy the rational mind in its search for explanation of the 
phenomenal world. 

To assume that the phenomenal world may be understood does not 
imply that any direct revelation of its character, purpose, and destiny 
has been made, or that an understanding has been fully wrought out ; 
but it does imply that by searching, comparing, asking, and prompt- 
ing nature to respond, a satisfactory schedule of its contents and pur- 
poses may be framed. The certainty of explanation lies in the possi- 
bility of explanation. Chemistry, astronomy, geology, and physiology 
were all scientific possibilities long before they became trustworthy 
systems of truth. So the whole realm of nature, like any department 
thereof, may, under analysis, or by the application of principles used 
in the testing of higher truth, be interpreted or be induced to reveal 
all that it contains. It is here assumed that in the light of Chris- 
tianity the phenomenal world may be properly understood; but the 



IMPERFECT EXPLANATIONS. 457 

assumption is not made without qualifications. Believing that phi- 
losophy has failed in its attempt to explain nature, it must be ad- 
mitted that by its aid many mysteries have been simplified, many laws 
discovered, and human knowledge has been increased. To that 
source the debt of the thinker is not small. Philosophy must not be 
reproached for not doing what it is unable to do. 

If the task of explanation has been committed to Christianity, it is not 
because its prophets and apostles were, as men of genius, scholarship, and 
wisdom, superior to philosophers and scientists, but because they were 
the instruments of the divine Spirit in revealing the hidden truths of 
the ages. The ground of the claim here set forth is not the superior- 
ity of the sacred writers, but the superiority of the truth itself. Even 
in this respect our claim must not be extravagant. Science is very 
imperfect in its contents ; it reveals facts, but accounts for nothing ; 
it discloses the composition of things, but does not explain the things 
themselves. It tells the properties of oxygen, but does not tell how 
oxygen came to be, or what it is. It eulogizes chemical affinity, 
points out its uses, but does not define it. Of crystallization as a law 
it says something ; as a force, it says nothing. 

Now, if philosophy stops short of explanation, though it expounds 
laws and principles ; if science scarcely goes beyond the facts, though 
it is enthusiastic in its search for them ; does not Christianity, discard- 
ing the instruments of philosophy and science, essay a task far be- 
yond its power and range when it proposes to illuminate the phenom- 
enal world, and declare the secrets it has contained since its foundations 
were laid ? To guard against disappointment it should be stated that 
the revelations of Christianity touching the phenomenal world are by 
no means complete ; they fall short of what curiosity requires, and 
even Keason complains of the apparent paucity. Ignorance, there- 
fore, prevails even in the circles of Christian thought. This leads us 
to observe that the light of Christianity is a peculiar light ; like the 
light of the sun, it is a mystery, but, like that light, it is light to 
those who have eyes. Science gives facts without explanations ; 
Christianity is an explanation without the facts. It is one thing to 
take knowledge of the facts ; it is another thing to take knowledge 
of the explanation. One may see darkness ; it is not always certain 
that one may see light. Science can not explain Christianity ; Chris- 
tianity explains science — that is, its facts. 

It makes nothing against the explanation that it is imperfect, so 
long as the imperfection lies chiefly in the want of details, or in its 
application to single objects. It grapples with the whole, with mag- 
nitude, not with atoms. It comprehends the All, not a single point. 
It explains not the pebble in which there is all of geology, but it 



458 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

explains the heavens, out of which all science, all philosophy, all 
religion must come. It explains not the leaf, which is botany, but 
the globe, which is universal truth; not the insect, which is " natu- 
ral history," but the human race, which is divine history. Dealing 
seldom with single facts, but always with broad principles ; omitting 
the details of the total result, but comprehending the total result, 
the interpretation of Christianity at first appears imperfect, but at 
last it is sufficient. 

First, touching the genesis of the physical universe, Christianity 
speaks a definite word on which it rests its scientific character. Over 
this question what contests have occurred ! What solutions have as- 
serted themselves ! How the philosophical eye has strained itself to 
catch a glimpse of the beginning ! What ponderous theories, what 
pessimistic hypotheses, what materialistic statements, what agnostic 
settlements, have appeared, each and all to be succeeded by others 
less objectionable in form, but quite as deficient as explanations ! 
Listening to the babel of scientists, we hear of monads, atoms, spon- 
taneous motion, eternity of matter, germs, laws, forces, protoplasm, 
bioplasm, evolution — words suggestive of tension, perplexity, athe- 
ism, materialism ; words with the mildew of night upon them. The 
elimination of a Divine Power from the universe, or the endowment 
of nature with a self-creating energy, dispensing entirely with the neces- 
sity of personal superintendence, impious as it may seem to the devout, 
has been attempted by materialistic philosophy ; indeed, the Nebular 
hypothesis, as propounded by Laplace, and evolution, as expounded 
by Spencer, seem not to require the mediation of a personal Creator. 
When Napoleon inquired of Laplace why he did not recognize God 
in his Mecanique Celeste, his reply was, " I have no need of such a 
hypothesis." However, it must be confessed that the Nebular Hy- 
pothesis and Evolution are not in themselves incompatible with the 
theistic notion ; they seem to be atheistic, and are employed as sup- 
ports of the atheistic sentiment, but as methods of the divine working 
in creation they are not per se atheistic. As a " working hypothesis," 
no objection is made to the Nebular theory, or any other theory ap- 
parently contrary to the theistic conception, provided, when the 
experiment of solving mysteries by it has been honestly made, the 
result shall be honestly declared. 

Materialistic philosophy, in its eagerness to interpret nature, be- 
gins with the atheistic assumption, to which no objection is raised, 
provided it will reject the assumption when required by the facts 
so to do. Christian thinkers, quite as anxious to read nature, be- 
gin with the theistic assumption to which materialists should not 
object, provided its friends will agree to abandon it so soon as its 



ORDER OF THE PHENOMENAL WORLD. 459 

unavailability is discovered. Truth gains a double advantage by the 
double assumptions ; it will be vindicated finally by both, and as 
truth is more important than any theory, every theorist should be 
encouraged to press on to a conclusion, for truth is waiting for a 
settlement. 

How the worlds were made is a mystery, more because God is a 
mystery than that matter is mysterious. Understand God, and his 
works and methods are understood. It is because he is in shadow 
that his methods are still obscure. However, the method of world- 
building may finally.be known, since he is becoming better known; 
it " doth not yet appear," we may now say. We stand ready to ac- 
cept any theory or method, whether the Nebular hypothesis or any 
other, that is compatible with the theistic notion, for Christianity re- 
veals the Maker of the world, even though it does not reveal the 
method of the Maker's activities. 

If the method of creation is obscure, incomprehensible even to the 
scientific mind, the order of creation is transparent, and, as given in 
Genesis, is almost complete. No scientist has improved on Moses in 
the discovery of the plan of creation, which, beginning with light, 
terminates with man. Without extending this thought, it may be 
stated that Christianity is both a key to the authorship of the world 
in a personal Creator and to the order pursued by him in creation. 
This is the dawn of day ; this is an approximate settlement of the fun- 
damental problems. 

As lower problems are always involved in the higher, and as the 
solution of the lower is determined by the solution of the higher, we 
may now proceed to the lower and specific questions arising from the 
fact of a phenomenal world, remembering that its authorship and 
order have been defined in the terms of the Christian religion. 

The phenomenal world is a great mystery. He who undertakes 
to define the essence of matter, or report all her secrets, will be over- 
whelmed by the magnitude of his task, and probably be willing to 
surrender it to others before he shall have concluded it. Between a 
property of matter and the spirit of matter, or the law of its being, 
there is a wide difference ; and it is not understood that philosophy, 
while successful in detailing the one, has thrown any light upon the 
other. Forms of matter may be described ; many of its laws may 
be enrolled in our categories; the beauties of the physical dress of 
matter may be discovered ; the curiosities and combinations of matter 
may be exhibited and preserved ; but matter itself, the idea of mat- 
ter, the being of matter, separate from its concrete types, eludes the 
gaze of the most intrepid explorer of nature, and refuses to ac- 
quaint man with its mystery. Does matter exist? If so, what is it? 



460 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

In the presence of this question philosophy is either dumb or divided 
and confused. 

Nor let us hastily conclude that the Christian thinker is free from 
embarrassment as he is asked this question. Confronted at the gate- 
way of the phenomenal world with the becoming, or non-being, he 
can not speak with any more assurance or perceive with any greater 
delicacy of vision the essential spirit of matter; but Christianity is 
the pass-word to the inner sanctuary of things, and by this he may 
enter and declare the secrets of the hidden world. Perhaps not all 
the secrets ; but such as are essential to intellectual comfort he may 
understand. Christianity leaves us not in total darkness, nor is na- 
ture in an eclipse when the Sun of righteousness shines upon it. In 
its light we see deeper than forms, we see more than properties, we 
apprehend more than laws, we comprehend nature as the idea of God 
reduced to physical conditions and impregnated with his lofty pur- 
poses. Nature is a panorama of divine ideas, or the reality of divine 
thought, cognizable in visible form. As Christianity is the divine idea 
itself in spiritual form, it is not unreasonable to anticipate that the 
divine idea in physical form will agree with it. Agreement may be 
predicated on the assumption that the divine idea is not self- 
contradictory, but self-luminous and self-harmonious ; hence, the di- 
vine idea in nature must agree with the divine idea in Christianity, or 
Christianity and nature are one. This is the same thing as saying 
that the theology of nature corresponds to the theology of Christianity, 
and that what one is in essence the other is also, the only difference 
between them being the frame-work which supports them. 

Now, if this view is correct, Christianity will have a strong defense 
in nature, and nature will have a satisfactory explanation in Christian- 
ity ; but it is not the value of the view that at this moment concerns 
us. We are impressed to know if the representation of the relations 
of Christianity and nature is true ; if the supernatural and the natural 
are one ; if either exists without the other. Bishop Butler's remark- 
able treatise on "The Analogy of Religion to the Constitution and 
Course of Nature " is suggestive of the harmony, the kinship, the 
identity of the two kingdoms of God. His "Analogy" has never 
been answered, because the facts employed can not be disputed, and 
the argument founded on them is remorselessly logical. In the analogy 
is a path to the explanation of nature. We shall, therefore, walk 
therein. Shakespeare speaks of " sermons in stones," but there are 
sermons in the stars, sermons in the trees, sermons in the oceans, ser- 
mons in every thing. Nature is the great sermon or expositor of 
Christianity, as Christianity is the great sermon or expositor of na- 
ture. Christianity is the apocalypse of natural religion. 



DIVINE ATTRIBUTES SUGGESTED. 461 

By nature is meant the phenomenal universe, which includes 
space, time, motion, law, and force, as well as the solid forms of mat- 
ter, or that concrete realm of non-being which is the outward expres- 
sion of being. Phenomena are illustrations of Christian truths ; this 
is the thought. 

Consider space. Like God, it can not be adequately defined ; like 
God, it is without parts; like God, it is everywhere, occupied or un- 
occupied. Space, then, is a mirror of the Infinite so far forth as it is 
a suggestion of certain qualities we attribute to the Infinite. It does 
represent to human thought the idea of omnipresence, and also the 
idea of bodiless spirit. Though it does this imperfectly, it does it. 
Space is the allegory of an infinite idea. 

Consider time. The reality of time is an independent philosophical 
question ; as a moral factor, or as related to any truth of Christianity, 
it is the exponent of the eternity of God, for a limited duration is 
possible only because there is an unlimited duration from which it is 
derived. Time is the reflex of eternity. This may not be satisfac- 
torily conclusive, but it is the weakness of analogical argument in 
general that it is not equal to demonstration. 

Consider motion. Dispensing with the laws of motion, the fact 
of motion is a sign or proof of the existence of some definite char- 
acteristic of the divine Being. It is inconceivable that there was a 
time when motion was not, for a motionless universe implies uni- 
versal inertia, which is absurd. If there was a time when God only 
existed, our conception of him requires us to believe that he was active 
for and in himself, for a motionless Deity is as inconceivable as a mo- 
tionless universe. In this view motion is eternal. It belongs to the 
nature of God, and a universe is impossible without it. This, how- 
ever, is not exhaustive. Motion is everywhere perceived or unper- 
ceived, felt or unfelt, representing not only the ceaseless activity of 
the Deity, but the omnipresence of the Supreme Power. It is in 
space ; every star quivers with motion ; every atom is a reservoir of 
motive forces ; the universe is in motion, it is a motion. This is the 
foreshadowing of the universality of the divine Presence. 

Thus space, time, and motion join in suggesting the attributes of 
spirituality, omnipresence, and eternity, as belonging to one who is 
above all things, who is God. 

Likewise, if we consider some of the laws and forces of nature, 
we shall find adumbrations of the attributes of the Infinite, or reve- 
lations of the divine intelligence and the divine government, such as 
the preceding did not suggest. Whether law is the method of action, 
or the course of a process, or the sign of a purpose, certain it is that 
the laws of nature are singularly uniform in action and always con- 



462 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ducive to specific results. The laws of nature are not failures. In- 
terfered with, they may not accomplish what otherwise wouldfollow, 
but they never break of themselves. 

Gravitation may be overcome, but, unrestrained, it honors the 
center of the earth by bowing to it as if it were in authority. So 
stable is law, and so reliable are the forces of nature, that calcula- 
tions based upon them are not likely to deceive, unless the calcula- 
tions themselves are erroneous. The stability of law points to the 
immutability of the divine character, and is an assurance that the 
divine promises will be fulfilled. The laws of nature have their 
counterpart in the promises of the Gospel. 

Another analogy or suggestion springs up at this point. The law 
of crystallization results in crystals ; the law of attraction and repulsion 
in planetary motion ; the law of capillary attraction in growth ; the 
law of cohesion in solidity ; and every other law fulfills itself in a 
product consistent with its governing influence. This secures order in 
the universe, and it expresses the wisdom of the mind that devised 
it. Law is wisdom. A divine order, or a beneficent arrangement, 
is as much a reflection of the divine wisdom, as power in nature is 
expressive of the divine power, or motion of the divine activity. 

Equally expressive of some divine attributes are the forms of mat- 
ter, which to us are antecedent signs of ideal thoughts ; but which 
in themselves are the products of the divine idea respecting matter. 
That matter should assume any form at all is significant of a former; 
but when it seeks a variety of forms the spherical, triangular, and 
rectangular, the thinker is compelled to pause and inquire the mean- 
ing thereof. Either matter at its own instance selects a particular 
form, or an unseen hand puts it in shape, and sends it forth on duty. 
Why the drop of water prefers the spherical, no one has explained ; 
why a star has center and circumference no one knows. Matter 
runs in molds, and reappears in all the splendid forms of the 
natural world. 

It is the idea of Thomas Hill that these forms are after geometrical 
ideals, which borders on the Pythagorean conception that geometry 
is the content of nature. To this suggestion, rational and explicit, 
we subscribe. Nature is the crystallization of mathematical princi- 
ples; the phenomenal world is an algebraic equation. Whence the 
principles or ideals? Account for these, and the mystery is dissolved. 
Plato, in contemplating the genesis of matter, held forth the doctrine 
of "ideas" as the pre-existent condition of matter, worlds, and being; 
that by ideas the Deity was governed, and incorporated them in all 
existences ; that he is the great Idea himself, and conformed all things 
to that idea; hence, unity, beauty, adaptation, and utility, as the 



RELATION OF NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 463 

constituents of the universe. The thought of Plato is magnificent, its 
value is incalculable. Ideas imply mind, and executed ideals imply 
intellective action. If nature is a concreted ideal, or a reduction of 
thought to physical form, it implies intellectual activity on a stupen- 
dous scale ; it implies infinite mind. Thus the forms of matter, less 
important than the fact of matter, or the reality of being, have their 
explanation in the Christian doctrine of the activity of eternal thought, 
which is the sign of an infinite mind. 

The lesson from color is a confirmation of the same doctrine. What 
is color? Is it a variation of light? Whence light? God said : " Let 
light be ; and light was." As this is the origin of light, so is it the ori- 
gin of color, for without light color is impossible. Color is not without 
its uses, is implicit with a divine idea. Form is one source of beauty ; 
color is another, addressing and refining the aesthetic sense in man, 
and pointing to the aesthetic attribute in the divine character. Given 
one color only, and the physical world would be unendurable. Given 
seven colors, and it is beautiful. 

The distribution of color in nature must have been made accord- 
ing to a law in harmony with the aesthetic sentiment, or according to 
aesthetic law. For instance, the firmament is blue; the forests in the 
Spring-time are green, and in the Autumn turn brown; the snow 
is white; sunsets, landscapes, mountain scenery, the fields of grain, 
and gardens of flowers, exhibit color in all its variety and combina- 
tion, addressing the eye, and ministering to the taste of man. The 
cesthetics of nature signify the cesthetics of the divine character, revealing 
the beauty, perfection, and harmony of God. 

Surely the relation of natural and revealed religion is not an ac- 
cidental, much less an unmeaning, relation. Christianity reflects its 
doctrines in nature, and nature, like a mirror, gives them back again; 
this is fellowship, this is unity. The two are one. In space, time, 
and motion, we catch a glimpse of spirituality, omnipresence, and 
eternity; in laws and forces the foreshadowings of infinite wisdom 
and a providential government are manifest ; in the forms of matter, 
burnished with living colors, there are the reflections of wisdom, 
beauty, and perfection. Nature is a confirmation of the theistic hy- 
pothesis on which Christianity rests, on which all philosophic thought 
must eventually rest. 

Admitting that nature furnishes a chapter of facts for the support 
of the theistic idea, it is sometimes hinted that it throws but little if 
any light on the spiritual doctrines of Christianity ; or, that what 
constitutes it a separate and independent religion has no confirmation 
in the analogies of nature. To this suspicion let us at once give at- 
tention. The argument from analogy is worth nothing in this 



464 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

discussion if it does not establish faith in the idiosyncrasies of Chris- 
tianity, or give support to those truths not found in other religions. 
However, to be effective analogy must not be pressed too far, nor be 
made to include every thing. It is not now affirmed that nature is a 
reflection or confirmation of every spiritual truth in the New Testa- 
ment, much less of all its facts, although an elaborate analysis of the 
contents of natural and revealed religion might result in a vindica> 
tion of certain truths supposed hitherto to stand upon an independent 
basis, and without any support whatever in nature ; but it is affirmed 
that nature, as a whole, is an arch beneath Christianity, as a whole. 
The one is not contrary to the other; the one is the secret defender 
of the other. Bishop Butler did not support every doctrine by anal- 
ogy ; nor is it necessary. If it can be shown that the drift of natural 
truth is toward spiritual truth, or one is the index to the other, the 
poiut is gained. 

As we have seen, nature drifts toward the theistic hypothesis. As 
we shall now see, the constitution of the world is the index to the 
doctrine of a moral government, with all implied in it, in the uni- 
verse. A drifting of human government toward moral government 
is discovered in the general approval of virtue and the general con- 
demnation of vice among men ; but the drifting of natural law toward 
moral law is seen in the fixed sanctions of virtue and the unchange- 
able condemnation of vice in the constitution of things. Man's atti- 
tude toward virtue and vice may be arbitrary, arising from self-interest, 
while nature's attitude on ethical principles is unpartisan, universal, 
and eternal. The spirit of justice is in the world, regulating, or sug- 
gesting the regulation of affairs, according to the principle of equity. 
Whence came it? Back of education, back of governmental policies, 
back even of religious impulses, must the searcher go for the genesis 
of the spirit and principle of justice. In spirit the government of the 
world is a picture of exact justice; it is the perfect adjustment of re- 
lations or conformity to an ideal of order. Justice, as a principle, is 
as inherent in the constitution of things as is the ethical idea itself. 
It is as fundamental to nature, to the reality, the regularity, and 
order of the physical universe, as it is to the religious spirit, that is 
to say, religion. What is justice? Defining it with reference to 
men, Plato says it is non-interference with other men's affairs, which is 
deeper than it seems. It implies abstinence from wrong, which in 
its inner content implies the doing of right. Justice is right-doing, 
but right-doing involves liberty, order, fraternity, equality, humanity ; 
but this is the ethical concept transferred from nature to society. 
Nature abhors wrong-doing ; it never does a wrong. Nature is the 
synonym of right-doing, involving the concrete ideas of the ethical 



NATURAL IMAGES OF MORAL IDEAS. 4o*5 

concept. Likewise, truth is one of the symbols of nature. Myste- 
rious nature is, but never deceptive. It is not a huge lie. Its laws 
are the images of truth ; its forces are truth-conserving forces ; its 
forms are the truthful representations of divine ideals. Nature is re- 
liable. Nature acknowledges responsibility to a Supreme Ruler, arid 
obeys every mandate. Hence, the idea of government springs from. 
the faithfulness and integrity of nature. ' ' 

In like manner, virtue, courage, honesty, and goodness, are thor- 
oughly portrayed in the unwritten constitution of the world, suggest- 
ing the primary ideas of authority, honor, sobriety, and righteousness, 
in the moral government that is seen to prevail. 

This analogy, the natural foreshadowing the moral, is one of the 
most formidable the materialist confronts. Everywhere the proclama- 
tion of justice, truth, and righteousness rings in his ears ; everywhere 
the terror of penalty rolls across the path of the wrong-doer; and 
continually the thought of responsibility weighs down the heart of the 
obdurate, and checks him in contemplated crime. It is the voice of 
nature speaking through her laws, forces, and forms, the moral truths 
of God; it is nature certifying to the double doctrine of rewards and 
punishments in the moral realm. If a natural world suggests a moral 
world, and a natural government a moral government, then natural 
penalties and blessings suggest moral penalties and rewards. If the 
analogy is worth any thing, it is worth this much ; but if it is worth 
so much it is a conformation of just what Christianity itself foretells 
as the issues of moral government. : 

Another great doctrine of Christianity is the removal of evil by 
redemptive agencies, the chief of which is the personal influence and 
power of Jesus Christ. Does nature reflect this doctrine? Here the 
analogy has its limitations, but it is not wanting in satisfactory ele- 
ments, or in direct reference to the Christian idea. The trend of 
nature is toward the doctrine, even the method of removal being 
foreshadowed in the course of its development. If it does not point 
to Christ as underneath all things, it does sustain the idea of sacrifice 
as the condition of growth, prosperity, life ; if it does not foreshadow 
a person on the altar, it points to altar and executioner ; if it does 
not proclaim atonement by law, it practices it as the essential of its 
history, and prepares the way for its holier exhibition in religion. 
Herbert Spencer insists on the evanescence of evil through evolution- 
ary processes; declares that nature proposes, by methods entirely its 
own, to expel evil as an incumbrance; and believes that righteousness 
will some time prevail. This is the objective ideal of the Gospel, to 
be realized, however, not through natural agency, but by Gospel 
agency. By its evolutionary process, entirely inadequate in itself, 

30 



466 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

nature typifies the redemptive process, which is all-sufficient for the 
purpose. Evolution is the promise, or the sign of redemption in 
Jesus Christ. 

Christianity posits the extinction of evil on the vitar influence of 
the personal sacrifice of the Son of God. Is this the doctrine of 
nature? Sacrifice is a doctrine of nature, so vital to nature that it 
could not survive without it ; hence its religious bearing. Without 
light, atmosphere, and soil, the vegetable world must perish, which is 
the same as saying that the vegetable world lives at the expense of 
other worlds. Without sacrifice neither tree, nor flower, nor grain, 
nor fruit had been, nor will be. In like manner the animal world 
either preys upon itself, or upon the vegetable world ; every animal 
lives at the expense of some other animal, or some other form of life. 
To a still greater extent man is dependent on all the worlds around 
him. He can not live alone. He is not independent of any world. 
He lives because other worlds lie at his feet dead. Every living 
thing is indebted to some other living thing for life. There is nothing 
that is adequate to life alone. Life means that something has died. 
The thread of sacrifice runs through nature, is found in every department, 
and links the kingdoms together. An evolutionary system of redemption, 
without sacrifice as its chief corner-stone, would not be in harmony 
with nature. The redemptive system, as wrought out in Jesus Christ, 
harmonizes with the sacrificial order of nature; in one a Thing is 
sacrificed ; in the other a Person ; in one physical blessings result ; 
in the other spiritual life. 

So far, Nature is in accord with the teachings of Christianity. 
The two agree touching fundamental truths, and this is all that is 
necessary. Agreement or non-agreement on other lines will not 
affect the analogy herein exhibited, or the argument drawn from it. 
The agreement established is almost equal to a demonstration, for it 
is cumulative, gathering strength as it is unfolded, and substantiating 
the last truth with more certainty than the first. Beginning with the 
iheistic hypothesis it confirms the Jewish faith ; ending with atone- 
ment in Jesus Christ it confirms the Christian faith. By virtue of 
tt^ese analogies, nature has a moral explanation in Christianity, as by 
virtue of the theistic notion it has a philosophical explanation in 
Christianity. 

If it is suggested that the so-called analogies or teachings of 
nature were not observed in other ages, and have not impressed the 
scientific thinkers of modern times, and, therefore, the inferences de- 
duced are to be received with reservation, it is sufficient to reply that 
this does not destroy the force of such teachings or contradict the 
analogies. The pulpit sometimes alludes to the common fact of day 



UNITY OF SUBSTANCE. 467 

succeeding night as a fair illustration or hint of the resurrection, and 
it makes not against it that Solon and Cicero never drew such an in- 
ference from the fact. The rejection of an analogy must be 
grounded in something better than the rejecter's ignorance of the 
matters involved. It is confessed that the interpretation of nature is' 
not easily made ; without the light of Christianity it is questionable 
if it can be understood in any true or lofty sense. The discovery of 
an analogy is due to an acquaintance with both nature and religion, 
and can not arise from a knowledge of one only. Analogy, like com- 
parison, implies two objects, and it can not be drawn except as the 
person drawing it understands both objects. If Solon did not see any 
analogy in the unfolding of the butterfly from the chrysalis to the 
resurrection ; if Cicero saw no hint of it in the re-appearance of day 
after night, it chiefly proves that while they were familiar with one 
set of facts they knew nothing of the other ; that is, they knew the 
physical facts, but were ignorant of the resurrection. Hence, they 
could not draw an analogy. Given both sides and analogy is possible, 
pertinent. As an equation is possible with two sides, so analogy is 
possible when both objects are understood. The analogy of nature to 
Christianity must, therefore, remain an indubitable evidence of the 
truth of the latter, and a key to the secrets of the former. 

A more specific study of the phenomenal world is now required, 
and is possible in the light of Christianity. Let us contemplate 
the universe as a whole. There is one universe, and one only. 
Worlds many, systems of worlds complex, laws governing them 
numberless, but after all one universe, identical in subtance, motion, 
spirit, purpose. Astronomy is a wilderness of facts, but order reigns 
throughout the vast domain of the firmament, and points to a single 
organizing mind, and to a single fulfilling purpose. The larger the 
realm of the worlds the more amazing the thought of its unity, but 
it grows upon the mind as the proofs of it become conspicuous. How 
unity is consistent with such far-reaching complexity ; what the idea 
of unity comprehends or foreshadows ; what general laws contribute 
to the fulfillment of the single programme evidently being carried out 
in the universe ; in what unity actually consists ; these are phases of 
the subject that press themselves forward for attention. 

What is the unity of the universe? It is a unity of substance. The 
proof is from chemistry. Of the seventy elements of which matter 
is composed, the chemists report not more than twelve which are 
common, and of the twelve only three or four are universal, and 
even these they are disposed to reduce to one. The one may be, 
must be, complex, but it is one evidently. If the universe is the 
procession of one substance, so divided, energized, and manipulated 



468 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

by divine wisdom as to produce the heavens and the earth, and it is 
found in all organic and inorganic bodies, the interpretation of 
nature is simplified and the theistic notion of Christianity scien- 
tifically confirmed. To this conception of unity any objection 
founded on the variety in nature must be regarded superficial, for 
variety is compatible with unity. Carbon is the principal element of 
diamond, graphite, and charcoal, substances so different as seemingly 
to contradict the notion of unity, but not different after all. Fixing 
the mind' on the varieties of the human race one must pronounce 
against unity until one learns that in instinct, blood, social impulse, 
and religious desire the human family is a unit. " Of one blood," 
says Paul, all nations were made. The unity of the race is a unity 
of blood, a " physiological unit," to quote Herbert Spencer. 

If variety makes not against unity, it may be supposed that the 
absolute differences between the kingdoms of nature can not be recon- 
ciled with the theory of the " unit ;" as the animal kingdom is ap- 
parently in no wise related to the mineral kingdom ; an elephant can 
not be one with the emerald. To undertake to reconcile differences 
Jbetween specific objects might be entertaining, but it is unnecessary, 
for if it can be demonstrated that all nature, with its subdivisions, 
kingdoms, ranks, originated from one substance, the problem of dif- 
ference is settled with it. Difference is another word for variety. 
Nature had a beginning ; if a single beginning, then it is proper to 
speak of a physical unit containing the possibilities of the universe. 
Chemistry inclines to a physical unit, and has gone far enough to in- 
timate that hydrogen is that unit. This is getting back to a first 
principle, to the "beginning." 

If hydrogen is the substance-unit of the physical universe, all 
things, theoretically at least, must be resolvable into hydrogen, or 
into elements kindred to it. This will explain the emerald and the 
elephant, the eagle and a grain of sand. Inquiring into stellar con- 
ditions the idea of unity has received such encouragement as prac- 
tically to be indorsed by all thinkers, materialistic and Christian. 
Hydrogen is a constituent of the earth, the sun, and all the stars. 
Sodium enters into the composition of all the worlds. Iron, magne- 
sium, and calcium abound in all the orbs. " The dust of our streets," 
says Winchell," is ignited to starry suns in Arcturus and the Pleiades." 
The scientific proclamation of the substantial unity of the worlds 
is an advance Step toward the resolution of the problem of the origin 
of the worlds, for one in substance they must have had a similar origin. 

Passing to the harmony of forces in nature, the observer will be 
justified in assuming a unity of purpose in the universe, which has 
some bearing on Christian truth, as we shall shortly see. Storms, 



NATURE A SYMBOL OF HUMANITY. 469 

earthquakes, accidents, and diseases, in the judgment of the pessi- 
mist, are proofs of a disorderly government, of a government without 
ends. If the world has a ruler, he is a tyrant, remorselessly crushing 
the majority, and delighting in the agony of his subjects. Pessimism 
is dyspeptic philosophy ; it looks at one side only, and does not see 
that clearly. Admitting friction as the result of a play of forces, the 
total result is harmony ; admitting suffering in the realm of nature, its 
beneficent use is moral elevation ; admitting conflict, the stability of 
nature is assured. Nature exists for ends ; either for itself, or for 
man, or for its Maker. Descending to the lowest mechanical view 
of nature, that it exists for itself and is unrelated to man, here is 
the idea of purpose, not high purpose, but purpose surely. To ac- 
cept such a teleology, however, one must know first that nature is 
conscious of such an end, otherwise the end is valueless. Nature is 
beautiful, but if beautiful for herself only, she must be consciously 
beautiful, which can not be admitted. The ends of nature are be- 
yond herself; she exists not for herself. Nature is because man is, be- 
cause God is. 

The relation of nature to man is a teleological relation ; other- 
wise nature is absolutely dumb, barren of interest, a clod. In the 
spirit of self-flattery man will insist that the earth was made solely 
for himself; but he remembers that the first man, representing the 
race, was commanded to conquer the earth and exercise dominion 
over it. It is beneath him ; it is his footstool ; it is his servant ; it is 
to minister to him. Its beauty and bounty are for him ; the mount- 
ains rise and the oceans roll for him ; the sun shines and the earth 
rotates because he is here ; the soil yields its harvests and the trees bear 
fruits because he desires them. The subordination of nature to hu- 
manity, or the ministry of the phenomenal world to the development 
of humanity, is one of the revelations of Christianity, placing man 
and nature in right relations and for worthy ends. 

Nor is this a full expression of the teleology of nature. Every 
man is related to some " district" in nature, as Emerson intimates; 
that is, one being a botanist in spirit, he will find botany in nature ; 
another being a zoologist, he will find zoology ; one a chemist, chem- 
istry will appear. Whatever the mind is there will be a field in 
nature to correspond to it and minister to it. In this sense man is a 
representative of nature, or nature is but humanity concreted in an* 
other form. Nature is the symbol of mind; it is the exponent of 
thought. Without mind, nature is impossible. The two are counter* 
parts ; one fits the other because one is the mirror of the other. Nature 
stands for man ; man stands for nature. Humanity emphasizes itself in 
nature, as Christianity reflects itself in the laws and forms of matter. 



470 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

To stop here, however,, would fall short of an exhaustive teleological 
interpretation of nature, which exists not for man alone. Related to 
him as nature is, the exponent of his being, as we have seen, never- 
theless nature's highest end is the glorification of its divine author. 
If it represent human thought, it also represents divine thought ; if 
it is the symbol of the human mind, it is the counterpart of the divine 
mind. Nature is the outcome of a divine plan framed in the begin- 
ning, and working for divine results. The vast universe is rushing 
on in fulfillment of a stupendous plan — one plan harmonious and con- 
sistent throughout its labyrinth of details ; one plan that embraces the 
stars and protects the sparrow; one plan that belts Saturn, turns the 
Euphrates from its channel, and pricks Vesuvius into flame ; one plan 
that guides a leaf in its fall, gives Niagara its brim, and tosses the 
rain-drop from the cloud. God is in nature ; nature is the arcana of 
divine thoughts. Nature stands for God ; God stands for Nature. In 
its ambassadorial capacity Nature is human and divine, representing 
the character of the one and the will of the other. 

In world-building the ideals, whether of forms, laws, or constit- 
uents, were few, perhaps reducible to one, just as all substances are 
one and all purposes but developments of one purpose. A unity of 
ideal is, therefore, next in order. To explain : We cite the form of 
a planet, which is spherical. This is the form of all the worlds, the 
asteriods, the comets, the firmament itself ; it is likewise the form of 
their orbits ; motion itself is largely circular ; and even small things, 
as a drop of water, the human eye, a tree, a flower, observe with 
some variation the regulation form. Even the laws of nature con- 
serve the spherical tendency, as falling lead turns into shot. Evi- 
dently the mathematical idea of the divine mind is the spheroid, 
which involves orbits, attraction and repulsion, distances, harmonies, 
all that astronomy contains, all that the multiplied sciences can reveal. 

Another ideal is the stability of species under which the animal 
kingdom has grown up with definite limitations, as to number and 
distinct lines, as to difference and separation. One species can not 
merge into another ; it either dies or remains forever separate. God's 
ideal can not be broken or obscured ; it stands out plainly in the his- 
tory of the animal creation. Going back no further than the infu- 
soria, animal life has evolved in a regular and undisturbed order, 
according to law and within its originally prescribed limitations. 
Scientific efforts to break down the barriers have resulted in failure, 
and established the reign of law. So the vegetable kingdom is an 
evolution, according to the law that like shall produce like, as the 
oak must produce oak. The fig-tree can not produce olive berries; 
like can not produce unlike. Evolution is nothing but the ideal work- 



NATURE ANTI-POLYTHEISTIC 47.1 

ing itself out in ilie law of like producing like, securing stability, order, 
and progress in the different realms of nature. \ 

In the generalization of the universe, a specific ideal of form gov* 
erned the divine mind ; and in the particularization of earth-life, a 
specific ideal of law was in operation. Development is wholly after 
ideals — can not proceed without them. In any event, unity is the 
result. Of this unity in the manifold, a unity toward which all de- 
velopment tends, and which embraces all things, we must make 
something, because it means something. Perplexed a moment over 
it, Christianity comes to our relief, interpreting it in a beautiful and 
religious way, and solving all the problems growing out of it without 
complications or tedious processes. On all its pages it proclaims the 
existence of one God, the Maker of all worlds, ascribing to him all 
power, wisdom, and goodness, and revealing him in his personal rela- 
tions to the smallest things that exist. Now, if the universe were 
made to reaffirm this doctrine — if its specific teleological aim were to 
establish the divine existence, it seems that it succeeds perfectly. 
The unity of the universe, whether considered as to substance, pur- 
pose, or ideal law, is a vindication of the monotheistic conception of 
the sacred Scriptures. Everywhere in the empire of nature, the im- 
pression of a master mind is visible. Whatever the variety of forms 
or complexity of forces ; whatever the details of organic and inorganic 
manifestations ; however mysterious the laws of activity and growth, — 
the intelligent observer always concludes on the unity of the supreme 
or presiding genius of creation. Polytheism he rejects, because nature 
nowhere teaches it. Nature is the Testament he reads, and, reading, 
he believes in one God. 

The unity of substance — of stars and specks of granite, of suns 
and shells and blades of grass, of Neptune and the earth— how was 
it possible if gods many were on thrones? From one God came one 
universe, and one universe from one substance ; this is harmony, this is 
truth. Equally decisive is the unity of purpose in the manifold, for 
from a many-centered source must issue many-formed plans ; but one- 
ness of mind is compatible with oneness of purpose. The unity of 
ideal, or the organized development of the universe, according to a 
single ideal — how was this possible if two supreme powers were in 
command ? Either the universe is mindless, or one supreme mind 
dictated the phenomenal world. Were the former true, we should 
be sorry to know it; were the former true, it could not be known, 
for the appearances of nature are against it. The unity of the universe 
is the plienomenal sign of the unity of God. From this conclusion there 
is no escape, either in religion or philosophy ; to this truth both must 
forever cling. 



472 PHILOSOPHY AND CHB1STIAN1TY. 

, . ,Next, the beauty of nature has a very satisfactory explanation in 
Christianity. The relation of the sublime to religion, or of religion 
to (the beautiful, is acknowledged ; but the explanation of the relation 
is, .as heretofore given, philosophical, rather than religious. The 
word "beauty" includes the total effect of order, form, proportion, 
harmony — every thing that goes to make up the idea itself, or con- 
tributes to the impression of the sublime. An object may be beauti- 
ful in form only, or grand from its magnitude, or attractive from its 
delicacy and minuteness. Yosemite Valley turns the traveler into a 
worshiper ; Niagara Falls subdues the visitor into silence ; an Autumn 
leaf speaks eloquently of approaching age, and mellows the spirit into 
sobriety and humility ; a rose inspires a botanist to classify it and an 
artist to paint it ; and unsesthetic minds can hardly resist the charm 
of i a sunset, or the loveliness of a landscape, or the grandeur of the 
heavens. Matter, through its form, or qualities, or relations, ad- 
dresses the aesthetic nature of man and satisfies it. The aesthetic 
faculty in man is proof of the sesthetic world external to man. 
Thomas Starr King regarded materialism as vicious, in that it brushes 
the halo from nature and shaves the twinkle from the stars. If the 
idea of God is repugnant to materialism, it is not surprising that any 
striking evidence of that idea is also repugnant to materialism. This 
is the turning-point in the thought: materialism shuts its eye to the 
beautiful, or rather, has no eye for the sublime in nature, while 
Christianity appropriates it, discovering in a decorated universe an 
additional proof of the mighty God. Jesus saw in the lily more 
beauty than in the gorgeous vestments of Solomon. 

The idea of the grand, the sublime, is congenial to Christianity; 
it: glows with the supernatural; now and then a miracle bursts forth 
from its mysteries, and wonders multiply with its revelations. The 
beautiful in nature is matched by the beautiful in Christianity ; the 
wonders of nature, by the wonders of Christianity; the sublime of 
the natural, by the sublime of the spiritual and heavenly. The 
beautiful in the one is the key to the beautiful in the other. 

•-: The interpretation of nature is not complete. In these pages we 
have frequently referred to the laws and forces of the phenomenal 
world, as if they had an independent existence — as if they stood apart 
from matter, but were incorporated with it as the condition of physical 
government. Given an explanation of natural laws, and nature 
itself, so far forth as it is worth considering, is explained. One 
thing is certain, that a knowledge of these laws has been but slowly 
obtained, and not all are yet understood. Perhaps the future will 
bring to light laws of which we now have no thought. Whether new 
laws will be added to the list or not, it is a singular fact that the 



INTIMACY OF THE NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL. 473 

laws now recognized were discovered by believers in God, and not by 
infidels, atheists, rationalists, or materialists. This is a triumph of 
Christianity in a new field, and in a new and unexpected way. 
This statement may be denied or be regarded as too exclusive, but 
we challenge the materialist to overthrow it by proof of the contrary. 
Newton discovered the law of gravitation ; Franklin gave us electricity 
in bottles; both were believers in God. Materialists and scientists 
opposed to Christian theology have discovered facts and announced 
theories ; but we are now speaking of laws. Prof. Tyndall never 
discovered a law. Darwin suggested the ' • law " of the survival of 
the fittest, but it is a theory. Hiickel constructs theories, and offers 
them as laws. Looking at the list of those who have revealed laws, 
the names of atheists and materialists will be conspicuously absent. 

Now, this means something. It looks as if it means that Chris- 
tianity qualifies the scientist for discovery, and materialism disqualifies 
for such work. It looks as if God has committed the revelation of 
the secrets of his universe to those who are in sympathy with him- 
self, just as he committed the truths of hi3 spiritual kingdom to those 
who believed in him. Nature, opaque and reserved to those who see 
not the divine foot-prints in her paths, turns lovingly to those who 
believe in her divine authorship, and pours forth into their hands the 
hidden treasures of her kingdom. If this be true, then Christianity 
and nature are on intimate terms, the precise character of their 
relationship being hitherto a matter of conjecture, but now the 
subject of revelation. 

Socrates, discerning the intimacy of the natural and spiritual 
worlds, said that the laws below are sisters of those above; Bacon, 
more practical, but keen-sighted enough, said that nature and truth 
are like print and seal ; and Swedenborg, mystical to the extreme, 
and seeing in things terrestrial the symbol of things celestial, invented 
a system of correspondences intended to express the hidden relation- 
ship ; and recently, Henry Drummond has sought to establish the 
identity of natural and spiritual laws, or that the spiritual was pro- 
jected into the natural, and rules all phenomena. In common with 
the above, Fourier, a French socialistic, styles social force as Passional 
Attraction, and regards the ''Newtonian principle of attraction appli- 
cable to the social and mental worlds." In these theories, we see a 
disposition to link the natural and the spiritual, and to explain one 
by the other. To explain the spiritual by the natural might land us 
in materialism ; to explain the natural by the spiritual will surely 
open up Christianity to our contemplation ; and, so far forth as these 
theories are an attempt to explain the lower by the higher, they 
deserve approval, and, perhaps, should be adopted. 



474 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

The theory of the identity of natural and spiritual laws, as pro- 
pounded by Drummond, can not be dismissed by materialism as 
conjecture, or by theology as revolutionary, for it is of the nature of 
a revelation. The ground-thought of the theory is the naturalness of 
the supernatural and the supernaturalness of the natural, or the unity 
of the natural and spiritual worlds, which is a great if not a true 
thought, and to be candidly considered, whether accepted or rejected. 
If natural laws are " blood relations" of the spiritual laws, the mys- 
tery of the universe disappears, or deepens into the supernatural, 
which, as Christianity is supernatural, must tend to confirm it. "Law 
in the visible," says Drummond, "is the invisible in the visible." 
The spiritual world existed first; the natural world was created in 
its image ; the laws of the higher were let down for governmental 
purposes into the lower, Hence, while the higher explains the lower, 
the lower may be the key to the higher. Gravitation, biogenesis, 
growth, death, and life, have their counterparts in the spiritual world ; 
more, they are spiritual laws transferred to the natural sphere. Drum- 
mond resists the suggestion that possibly natural laws are analogous 
to spiritual laws, by saying "it is not a question of analogy, but of 
identity." The entire code of natural laws, embracing chemical 
affinity, crystallization, capillary attraction, action and reaction, re- 
flection, refraction, and combustion, is a transcript of laws that ob- 
tain in the spiritual world, or were initiated into existence in the 
realm of the supernatural. 

Sucli is the theory. Much may be said in its favor ; it is on the 
side of Christianity and a thunder-blow to materialism. If the theory 
is true the natural and spiritual worlds are one, and need not be 
considered apart ; they are one in their government, one in law. Ma- 
terialism admits the unity of the physical universe, but accord- 
ing to this theory and under the principle of continuity the natural 
and spiritual are one. The two are hemispheres; the seen and the 
unseen are one world. 

Prof. Drummond urges that in this view religion has a new "cre- 
dential," a "new basis," being supported scientifically as hitherto it 
has been supported dogmatically. This, we think, is true, and is 
good reason for accepting it. While religion can thus be made to rest 
upon a scientific basis, science will be compelled to be reconciled to 
religion. Science will assail the dogmatic basis ; the scientific basis it 
can not disturb. At present this view of nature is not championed 
by theology, but science opposes theology because it refuses an ex- 
planation of spiritual truth from a scientific stand-point. However, 
as the spiritual world is understood to be a world of order, governed 
by law, and as spiritual truth is understood to be adumbrated by 



DIVINE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PHENOMENAL. 47.5 

natural truth, so spiritnal law will be made amenable to natural law, 
and spiritual methods be made to harmonize with natural methods. 
This conclusion will be reached without any detriment to revealed 
religion ; it will vindicate it and extinguish all traces of material- 
ism in the thought of the world. The drift is toward a scientific ex- 
planation of religious truth. The Duke of Argyll fears that the 
natural is casting out the supernatural, but the fact appears to be 
that the supernatural is casting out the natural. Bushnell declares the 
supernatural to be compatible with the natural, and that God governs 
the world by a supernatural method, which is the same thing as say- 
ing that the natural is supernatural. Paul settles it when he says, 
"The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are 
not seen are eternal." The eternal rules the temporal, is incorporated 
with it, and will exist after it has passed away. The identity of 
natural and spiritual laws establishes the reign of the supernatural in 
the universe, and the subordination of matter to spirit. 

The danger at this point is the tendency to idealism, which reduces 
matter to nothing by exalting law, spirit, personalty, or something to 
dominion over it, but this kind of idealism is the idealism of Chris- 
tianity. The unseen, whether law or spirit, is eternal. 

As Christianity is unfolded and its principles are applied to the 
natural world, the problem of explanation of its relations and activities 
is emancipated from many difficulties, and the solution rendered more 
probable. 

Nature and Christianity harmonize in their moral lessons, which is 
proof of a very intimate relationship, and that they are under one 
government and are endowed with similar functions and purposes. 
The perishability of the phenomenal world is an appalling fact to be ex- 
plained only on moral grounds, and as having moral ends in view. Globes 
cease to revolve ; comets burst ; nature decays ; and terrestrial life is 
on a march to the tomb. The delicate flower fades, the ripest fruit per- 
ishes, and the stateliest work of God is reduced to dust. What is the 
explanation? Materialists run off into pessimism, saying the world is 
misgoverned and wrong is on the throne ; fatalists say it is the 
natural order, and must be borne with patience and without regret; 
but the one walk as in the night, the other amid arctic blasts. Chris- 
tianity relieves the scene of darkness and cold. It explains the in- 
evitable destiny of nature with a clearness that is satisfactory, and 
with a dignity that is assuring. The divinest philosophy of matter is 
that of Paul, who pronounces things "seen" "temporal," and things 
unseen eternal. Matter is phenomenal, perishable ; the invisible is 
real, eternal. The moral lesson is to cling to the eternal. 

Emerson defines the end of nature to be moral; that is, its econ- 



476 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

omy is adapted to discipline man, and, as discipline is the con- 
dition of development, it is adapted to the highest purposes of 
humanity. The moral idea of nature is grounded in its constitution 
and exhibited in its relations to mau. But this transcendental notion 
harmonizes with the orthodox representation of the present life that 
it is a probation, or a moral trial, all its sufferings, frictions, and 
oppositions having in view the moral discipline and spiritual culture 
of man. The becoming is the grindstone of being; the phenomenal is 
turned to the refinement and spiritual sharpening of the intellectual 
and moral ; the visible burnishes or brings to light the invisible. 

Dropping to a practical level, or at least emerging from the mys- 
ticism of philosophy, we quote with approval the sentiment of Adam 
Smith, that nature is organized in "benevolent wisdom," having for its 
chief purpose the promotion of human happiness and the suppression 
of misery. Averaging the works of nature, and recognizing an evil 
bias in physical government, still there is an overbalancing propensity 
to good which in the fullness of the ages serves to secure happiness 
and repress misery. This is a check to pessimism, which sees a pre- 
ponderance of evil in the universe, or, failing to strike the average, 
fixes its thought exclusively on evil, the disciplinary compensations and 
the all-sufficient counteractions not being recognized. Too much is 
made of evil as an argument for misgovernment ; it is a proof of benev- 
olent wisdom that good may be wrought out through suffering, and 
that the highest ends may be secured through the opposition or in- 
strumentality of evil. The objective interpretation of nature, dis- 
covered in its relationship to ends, is a subject of vast interest, since 
it involves both religion and philosophy. Thus far it is on the side 
of religion. 

Pantheism interprets nature philosophically in the interest of 
itself as a religion. Let us look at the interpretation of a false re- 
ligion in contrast with that of the true religion. The study of its 
origin carries us back into the misty periods of Asiatic history, for 
the Eastern mind has always been given to mythological conceptions 
of nature, God, and man, resulting in systems of religion and phi- 
losophy that are marvels as mere systems, but of relative value only 
as truths. Looking into the phenomenal world the Eastern mind 
saw the presence of a governing spirit, apprehending it in its exhi- 
bitions of power and wisdom ; but instead of separating the Ruler 
from the world, the two were united and pronounced one. Person- 
ality was lost in phenomena. Nature is God, is the pantheistic 
creed. Outside of nature, there is no power ; nature is power, nature 
is wisdom ; nature is justice. The blindness, the stupidity of this 
centralized conception is so apparent that one wonders if it could 



COLOSSAL EXPLANATION OF NATURE. 477 

control a thoughtful mind ; but it is both a religious and a philo- 
sophical sentiment. Pantheism is still an interpretation of nature, 
closely allied to the scientific interpretation which reduces the world 
to the mechanism of law. In fact, what is the mechanical view of 
the world, which eliminates God, but a form of pantheism? Hackel 
says the religion of the future will be the religion of nature, which 
is saying that there is no God but nature. Pantheism, therefore, is 
the legitimate fruit of mechanism as advocated by the materialists. 

The Greeks had a way of looking at nature that rivals any 
modern attempt at sentimental expression, and if Christian theism 
were to be abandoned, or the Christian exposition of matter were 
superseded, the mythology of the Greeks would be as satisfactory to 
us as any thing yet suggested. Nature's forces were deified and 
worshiped, so that while a supreme god — Zeus — was acknowledged, the 
universe was apportioned to gods many, as Jupiter had the earth, 
Neptune the sea, and Pluto the infernal regions ; there was also a 
god of agriculture, a god of war, gods representing all of nature's 
forces, and human conditions. This polytheistic interpretation in- 
spired a reverence for nature which pantheism can not inspire. To 
be sure, it had its disadvantages, and was superseded, but it recog- 
nized nature ,as the product of godlike force, and saw a deific in- 
fluence in superintendence of nature. Whether polytheism is to be 
preferred to all anti-theism is a question which we should not be long 
in deciding. The issue, however, in these days is not between an 
outgrown philosophic conception and a religious view of nature, but 
rather between anti-theistic philosophic conceptions, and the theistic 
apprehension of the world. To the latter both religion and phi- 
losophy now tend, and all religions and philosophies in conflict with 
it must subside. The final cause of nature is moral, theistic. To 
teach man the wisdom and power of God ; to illustrate to him the 
divine goodness and the divine love of order ; to impress upon him 
the certainty of retribution for violation of higher law and the ex- 
pectation of reward for fidelity to truth ; to wean his mind from tem- 
poral things, and awaken in him a love of the eternal; this is the colos- 
sal explanation of nature found in Christianity and found in no other 
religion or philosophy. With this explanation, we must be reverent 
in the presence of nature ; w T e must worship in her temples, but 
avoid worshiping the temple ; we must believe in her teachings but 
avoid making them the sole truths of religion ; we must at last look 
away from nature to the religion she reveals, emphasizes, and proves, 
to him by whom and for whom all things consist. 



478 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE THEODICY OR CHRISTIANITY. 

BUCHNER is sponsor for the charge that Christianity has 
originated more crimes than it has hindered, a charge akin to 
that which makes liberty responsible for slavery, and life responsible 
for death. The implication is that the prevalence of the Christian 
religion contributes to human misery, notwithstanding its pretense of 
ability to relieve it, and that God, as revealed in the Scriptures, is in 
some way seriously involved in the existence and dominancy of evil. 
On the contrary, it is conceivable that the actual state of the world 
is not inherently depraved, and that whatever imperfection exists is 
quite incompatible with the known designs of the great Ruler, who 
in his own time will extinguish it, and demonstrate the ascendency 
of his reign in the universe. Just what is conceivable is actually the 
fact, as we shall discover. 

Christianity is an explanation of evil, as respects its origin, 
nature, purposes, and destiny, and equally an explanation of man's 
moral condition, as affected by evil, and as it may be improved by 
religion. It relieves God from responsibility for sin ; it relieves 
humanity from a traditional opprobrium which has long paralyzed its 
self-effort for moral elevation ; it relieves theology from falsehood and 
crudity ; it relieves Christianity from any voluntary participation 
in human degradation and sorrow. If it is assumed that the existence 
of evil can be vindicated from the revelations of Christianity, and 
that its mission is related to the progress of the world, according to 
the intent of religion, some of our readers will doubtless be startled, 
and imagine that a problematical reason for evil has been discovered. 
We shall not assume so much ; we shall assume nothing. The awful- 
ness of evil can not be overrated, its existence can not be palliated ; 
but, inasmuch as it is, if it can be shown that it is in the power of 
God to employ it in divine purposes, and as an auxiliary force in the 
development of his kingdom, a reason for its being may be an- 
nounced. Its origin is bad, but its instrumental mission or uses may 
possibly be made under the divine control subservient to divine ends. 

A superficial view of man's environment or of his natural char- 
acter as inherited,' and debased by a wrong development, is not likely 
to captivate the senses, or satisfy the thinking of an honest soul. A 
close scrutiny of his environment, inherently deficient in means of 



HEREDITY NOT AN EXPLANA T10N. 479 

alleviation, has produced the extremes of pessimism and atheism. No 
thoughtful or sympathetic mind will deny any fact of evil, any want 
of adaptation, any dissonance in life, pointed out by the pessimist 
or observer. We are quite willing to admit the history of evil and 
even to add to what he has angrily declared to exist. It is useless to 
hide the facts, as glaring as day, and to regard them as temporary 
blemishes, for they are deep-rooted, universal, and as painful as the 
intensity of life will permit. Even the blind see crookedness in the 
ways of the world. Smoke eclipses the sun, and the race walks on 
edges in darkness. The earth rocks like a ship in a tempest and 
reels like a drunken man in the mountains, It almost shakes itself 
out of its orbit, so wide-spread are its convulsions. Peace is on a 
visit to another planet. War reigns here ; war with the elements, 
war with law, war with disease, war with ignorance, war with death. 
Underneath the apparently fixed order of things there is a kind of 
nihilism at work, if not to destroy, at least to torment, and render 
abortive the best attempts of the race to rise to nobler things. 
Irregularity, confusion, distress, failure, are the common items of 
human experience. Caesar is on the throne, Job sits on an ash-heap; 
Dives is in his palace, Lazarus is in rags at the gate. Exaggeration 
of human experience in its distressful content is impossible. Let the 
pessimist paint the picture dark — we shall undertake to add a darker 
shade. Let him write gloom on the ground — we will engrave 
it on the stars. 

But what of it all? What of midnight? Is there no day? Facts 
first, then explanations. The origin of evil is a problem by itself; 
the uses of evil, or its possible helpfulness in the world's upward 
movements, may be made to appear in the light of its history. It is 
the uses of evil that now concern us. The origin of evil is the 
subject-matter of explanation; but, if its uses can be made clear, 
man's unhappy lot will have a partial explanation. Let it not be 
supposed, however, that Christianity is obscurely silent on the original 
problem, for, if its revelations are not transparent, they are more 
satisfactory than any thing propounded by philosophy. What, for- 
sooth, does philosophy propose as its theodicy? Does it point to the 
laws of heredity as the cause of vice? Heredity is only a method of 
transmission of the evil tendency; it is not an explanation of the 
origin or nature of the tendency. M. Caro, of the French Academy, 
contradicts the theory of heredity as explanatory of the passage of 
the sinful tendency, insisting that personality or individuality can not 
be inherited, but temperament and physical types only may pass from 
generation to generation. If evil is the taint of personality, and the 
origin of personality is not in heredity, then the origin of evil is not 



480 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

via heredity. This is a new idea in philosophy, but it is invulnerable, 
and disposes of heredity as the genesis of sin. The broader theory of 
evolution is sometimes summoned to account for the introduction of 
evil, but it applies only, if at all, to the development of the vicious 
nature, and not to its beginning. Pitiful, indeed, are the attempts 
of philosophers to reveal the foundations of the evil government in 
the universe, and equally insufficient their account of its historic con- 
volutions. To Christianity the inquirer must turn for explanations 
of the first appearance of diabolism in the universe ; if disappointed 
here, the hope of explanation must be abandoned. 

For the Bible explanation of evil, it is not claimed that it is alto- 
gether complete or transparent, since it is wanting in certain data 
that belong to the initial stages of its history, or, what is more im- 
portant, it is wanting in specific statement concerning the original 
impulse to evil. Carlyle says original sin is the vanishment of the 
conception of God from men's minds. God is absent from human 
thought — this is the beginning of sin. Given the source, and the 
stream follows. Christianity is a revelation of such facts as are abso- 
lutely necessary to individual redemption ; it does not seek to satisfy 
curiosity, or make known that which, however important to intel- 
lectual development hereafter, is not important to moral living here. 
For this reason, the explanation is allegorical, incomplete, hintful, 
but not a revelation that satisfies. However, evil had a definite be- 
ginning, a point of departure, in the earth's history. That at one 
time it broke out in heaven, is proof that its possibility has run 
parallel with eternal righteousness. Theoretically, it may do to say 
it has always existed, as the opposite of the idea of right, and this 
without any blemish on the divine government. If, as Dr. Whedon 
says, the power to sin implies no imperfection in character, so the 
possibility of evil, inherent in the constitution of things, inherent in 
the idea of existence, implies no imperfection of government or things. 
Possibilities are without moral qualities. The possibility of evil is not 
an evil. Evil, as a possibility, is eternal. From possibility it de- 
scended into reality, heaven first feeling its touch when it undertook 
to despoil the throne of the great King, but, failing in its purpose, it 
began its destructive work in the earth, where it still abides to torture 
the innocent and wreak its vengeance on the family of God. Its in- 
troduction to our globe is related in the Scriptures, of which various 
interpretations have been given; but, however understood, certain it 
is that, from the hour when Eve coqueted with the serpent, evil has 
been the tremendous fact in human history. The account is true in 
essence, and a solemn satisfaction is the product of faith in it. 

The more vital problem is the relation of evil to human life. 



EVIL THE PRODUCT OF LAW. 481 

Whether the universe, all worlds, all creatures, are corrupted, or are 
the victims of an evil spirit, we know not ; it is enough to know that 
humanity groans and waits for deliverance. Human history is the 
joint product of good and evil forces in ceaseless operation, the one 
now, and then the other, apparently in the ascendant, but together 
working out the one magnificent result of human progress, and the 
reign of the divine principle in the world's affairs. As the ocean tide 
includes both ebbing and flowing, so human history includes retarda- 
tion as well as progression. History is the arena or play-ground of 
antagonistic forces, .each bent on the exactly opposite idea of the 
other. One is good, the other is evil. To explain the relation, inter- 
action, and counteraction of these forces, or the presence of evil in 
history, the framer of a theodicy is under obligation. In essaying such 
a task, it is not incumbent upon us to explain every incident of evil, 
every fact of suffering, every accident or injustice ; but rather to con- 
sider the whole in the light of certain principles, under which the details 
of life may be grouped. Without these principles, it will be impos- 
sible to explain any thing; with them, it may be difficult to explain 
a particular incident. But, as gravitation explains all falling bodies, 
so these principles, it is believed, will explain evil as a whole. If 
they do not, we shall have to surrender the task and settle into the 
ignorance of mystery. 

Of the mission of evil, inferred from the uses to which Providence 
devotes it, we submit a tentative explanation. The word " evil" we 
use in a generic sense, including in it all the irregularities, disorders, 
incongruous complications, and chaotic conditions of man's natural 
life, arising from his environment, as well as the ignorance, false- 
hoods, oppositions, cruelties, bad governments, false religions, and sins 
justly chargeable to himself. It signifies the aggregate of disorders 
in man's world-life, the physical, intellectual, and moral obstructions 
to his happiness, development, and destiny. By the mission of evil, 
in this largest sense, we mean its moral ends, or the providential em- 
ployment of evil as an instrument in the securing of moral results, 
possibly not attainable by other methods. 

In our observations of God's government of the world, we are apt 
to overlook the fact that evil is under the restraints of law, or, to 
express it in another form, that evil is the product of law. This is a 
perfectly safe proposition, when examined in the light of its supports. 
Acknowledging the existence of God and the reign of a providential 
government, the idea of chance is inadmissible as an explanation of 
any thing. Accident is unknown in a providential government. No 
event happens that is not the result either of direct divine supervision 
or of the operation of fixed and beneficent laws. Evil, therefore, 

31 



482 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

must be the decreed result of divine Providence, which is a rejectable 
hypothesis, or the natural product of laws and forces, and, therefore, 
both in bondage to them and an orderly produced result, which ap- 
proximates the truth if it does not declare it wholly. Nature's irreg- 
ularities or disorders do not happen except in harmony with law, 
and are the products of law. The inconstant wind, sweeping over a 
prairie, is as much the product of law as the trade wind, which has a 
meteorological mission. The tempest at sea is as methodical in its 
procedure as the tides. Nature's laws will produce poisons, as well as 
agreeable and nutritious fruits. Zoology points out monsters of the 
forest ; ichthyology tells of fishes without eyes ; and natural history 
reveals insects with a stinging apparatus. All these are as much the 
products of laws as animals that are useful, as fishes with eyes, as in- 
sects that are harmless. Calamities, resulting from a supposed viola- 
tion of nature's laws, are in the line of nature's order, and as lawful 
as her benedictions. To say that the explosion of a steam boiler is 
the result of violated law is a very superficial explanation, for, while 
it may involve the carelessness of the engineer, the explosion occurred 
in obedience to law. It is not an anti-lawful result. The Ashtabula 
bridge disaster was the result of the law of gravitation. 

Approaching a little nearer the line, the diseases from which man 
suffers are not chance results, but the products of law, a study of 
which enables the physician to master them and rescue the patient. 
The diagnosis is along the line of causation — the track of law ; the 
prognosis is along the line of effects, recognized through the lens of 
law. Fever has its laws ; consumption, rheumatism, neuralgia, ague, 
all occur in obedience to law. Intermittent heart-beats result from 
law, quite as much as the regular pulse. 

Evidently, the disorders, the sufferings, the irregularities in human 
history are the consequences of law, and not of lawlessness. This 
does not involve God in close partnership with evil, but is an evidence 
that he is on the throne, and that evil is under divine restraint. It 
has the bandage of law about it. Evil, as the result of divine 
caprice, would be intolerable ; but evil, so-called, as the result of law, 
does not invalidate the benevolence of the Deity. Evil is not arbi- 
trary, therefore ; it arises from the constitution of things, and can not 
well be avoided. 

Many of the sufferings of mankind are due to natural environ- 
ment, which consists of, or abounds in, disorders and irregularities, 
that issue in a regular succession from the operation of fixed laws, 
and are inevitable. They constitute a part of human history, from 
the necessities of the situation, a situation divinely ordered and 
pre-arranged. 



HISTORY A PROVIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT. 483 

If the foregoing is at all rational, one may be justified in suspect- 
ing that evil, in its broadest sense, as a constitutional disorder, has a 
place assigned it on the divine programme of the world. 

Let us see how far the suspicion is correct. The teleology of evil 
can not be expressed by fatalism, or Calvinism, or by any short-hand 
method. If evil is the result of law, it anticipates an end, for law 
strives toward an end and always means an end. It is a scientific 
theory that progress is an end of nature ; its rule is the ' ' survival of 
the fittest ;" it proclaims that through gradual processes, intricate and 
long-continued, and even obstinate and persistent, the world will ar- 
rive at an improved condition. Nature, history, man, unite in pro- 
claiming the end of the world-life to be progress. To this theory we 
subscribe in full faith. Now, does evil in any wise interfere with the 
execution of the historic idea or plan of progress ? In still narrower, 
yet stronger, phrase does evil successively check the natural, historic, 
providential program of progress? We do not ask if evil retards 
human progress, for it does retard it, as we see it, or if it would not 
entirely prevent progress, were it not overcome, for it undoubtedly 
would stay the world's march. But evil as a friction or retarding 
obstacle, and evil as the extiuguisher of progress, are quite different 
things. The former, evil is ; the latter, it is not. Notwithstanding 
the obstacles to progress, history on the whole reports progress ; the 
gains exceed the losses ; the friction movements are overcome by the 
radical progressive currents ; and the world rises slowly, comparing 
with joy its present with its past. What does this signify ? That the 
designs of Providence can co-exist with evil and evolve into success ; 
that in spite of it and by its aid God's purpose will triumph ; that the 
divine idea of the world will round out in complete and concrete 
beauty, notwithstanding evil, like a mountain, stands in its path and 
disputes its success. Evil is not a hindrance to the execution of the prov- 
identwl idea. This is the broad view of evil. If not a final or fatal 
hindrance, it may prove to be a co-operating force in the progress 
of the world. 

The particular view is almost personal. What is the relation of 
evil to the individual ? To what uses may it be applied in the pro- 
phetic development of human character ? If evil will not prevent the 
fulfillment of the providential idea respecting the world as a whole, will it 
interfere with the providential idea respecting the individual ? The de- 
velopment of the individual is a wholesome possibility. He has a mind 
that may be expanded, a soul that needs cultivation. To secure his de- 
velopment two methods suggest themselves : 1. By an uninterrupted flow 
of truth into the mind ; 2. By struggle. The first method God has not 
ordained ; the second method is universal. Being universal, we are 



484 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

moved to say it is providential or natural, arising from man's environ- 
ment, and his own inherited deficiencies of sloth, passion, ignorance, 
and depravity. Either the environment must be changed, and man's 
nature be different, or struggle with the environment, and struggle 
with one's self must surely follow. Struggle is the logical necessity. 
But struggle implies a world of evil, so-called. Ignorant, a struggle 
for knowledge is imperative ; environed with laws, forces, solid forms 
of matter, a struggle for acquaintance with laws and mastery of forces 
is indicated ; possessed of passions and appetites anxious for excessive 
gratification, a struggle for self-control and purity is foreshadowed. Ed- 
ucation, righteousness, order, life, signify struggle. Bread, health, soci- 
ety, government, all mean struggle. The condition of man is the condi- 
tion of discipline, the thoroughness of which is made to depend on 
the strength and acuteness of the forces summoned against him. The 
use of obstacles, the virtue of discipline, is conceded in some depart- 
ments of life. Poverty is pronounced a blessing when it leads a 
young man to self-effort, developing independence, integrity, courage, 
faith, genuine manhood. Webster was indebted to his obstacles, and 
Jesus to his temptations. Stones in one's path often prove to be step- 
ping-stones to the heights. 

If the general principle is true, then its application must be true. 
If poverty, opposition, persecution, are the conditions of develop- 
ment, then suffering, temptation, sickness, and sorrow may open the 
life in its manifold possibilities. If discipline or development be the 
end of evil, it in a sense justifies evil as a providential instrument in 
human history. 

Another general fact which has not had full consideration in the- 
ology is the self-destroying power of evil, or the providential restriction 
imposed upon it, and the providential provisions for its extinction. 
Satan is in chains, and within the range of the chains his power is 
tremendous, and its exercise is dreadfully apparent. But we mean 
more than a general circumscription. Among the divine plans for the 
upbuilding of the world in righteousness not one is more conspicuous 
than that which in the long run arrays evil against evil, and pro- 
duces its destruction. In this way error dies amid its worshipers. 
Evil destroys evil, as one nail drives out another. War is organized 
barbarity, a type of evil, but the American war of 1861-1865 resulted 
in the extinction of slavery. Great evils arise, rooting themselves in 
customs, legislation, and social forms, and even take a religious name 
and threaten the subversion of our ideals of government, and we 
wonder how they will be circumvented and overthrown. Sometimes 
by righteous methods, sometimes by the peaceful exercise of civil au- 
thority ; but often mammoth evils go down by the resisting power of 



EVIL DESTROYING EVIL. 485 

other evils, as the pirates' ship goes down in the storm. Purgatives 
may be evils, but they expel disease ; counter-irritants may be severe, 
but they draw enemies from the vitals. The French revolution was 
a dreadful evil, but it was a remedy for a worse evil. This provi- 
dential method we may not fancy, since it involves suffering, but it 
is a providential method, and often explains the rise and fall of evils. 

In still another aspect evil will appear as a providential instru- 
ment for beneficent ends. Let us take the world as it has been, as it is, 
full of wicked men, plotting for empire, the subjugation of the races, 
and the conquest of. the hemispheres. Who or what can resist the 
surgings of political evil, the tides of ungodly ambition, that carry the 
Neros and Napoleons far toward success ? The frame-work of villainy 
is visible in the schemes of statesmen and rulers and warriors. What 
can overthrow them but Providence, by methods that may entail suf- 
fering, and at the same time conquer the lusts of men ? Evil may 
not only be employed in resisting evil, but in resisting evil men. It 
was an evil that chained Napoleon on St. Helena, and rid Europe of 
its enemy. Caligula went out by the assassin's blow. The sword was 
drawn, and Belshazzar and his drunken lords perished. The fatal cup 
of intemperance was drunk, and Alexander, who had despoiled the 
eastern hemisphere, was himself a corpse. The worms seized him, 
and Herod was dead. The winds blew, and the Spanish Armada 
was no more, and England was saved. If there must be evil, God 
can use it in the restraining of the wicked, in the punishment of the 
guilty, and even in the extinction of the gross evils that afflict 
mankind. 

Looking again at the world as it is, with false religions in the as- 
cendency in the East, and bad governments in power, it is evident 
that Providence has his hand upon them, and is turning them to ad- 
vantage in the execution of his purposes. However evil may have 
been introduced, it was introduced, and contaminated the springs of 
human history. The natural man is ignorant, selfish, cruel, without 
the capability of self-government, without apprehension of spiritual 
truths. The lower forms of government, such as despotism and aris- 
tocracies, grew out of man's natural condition, and were inevitable; 
and, without the Bible, false and superstitious religions were equally 
inevitable. It would be presumption to deny to these political forms 
of despotism any virtue or mission ; it would be the extreme of bigotry 
to deny even to false religions a place in the divine program. Des- 
potism and superstition, with all their crimes and cruelties, have been 
providentially linked with the world's destinies, and have been used 
in the preservation of the religious idea amid ages of darkness, and 
in preparing the world for the reception of the Gospel, and of dem- 



486 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ocratic ideals of government. God's truth has had partial embalm- 
ment in superstition, and heathen sages have piloted the heathenish 
millions through the uncertain past to the hopeful present. Thus in 
these things God's hand is seen, and his plan is visible. 

From this brief survey of the empire of evil, we conclude^ it is 
under the dominion of divine law and restraint, and that disorder, 
irregularity, disease, suffering, poverty, persecution, war, slavery, in- 
temperance, assassination, crime, superstition, and despotism ; yea, 
all evils are reckoned in the category of divine instruments for the 
accomplishment of divine purposes, the fulfillment of which is as cer- 
tain as that God rules. The world exists for a purpose which is 
ripening every hour, and evil, restrained and divinely directed, but 
adds to its unfolding and perfection. Through the lenses of history, 
Scripture, observation, and experience,* we conclude that evil, how- 
ever originated, has now a providential mission, and is in haste to 
perform it, and in the performance itself will expire. 

In the foregoing analysis or explanation the direct reference is to 
natural evil, as if it were the supreme and solitary fact in the uni- 
verse, while theologians devote their theodicies to moral evil, the 
reign of which is as conspicuous as the reign of natural evil. The 
question then is relevant : is there any difference between natural and 
moral evil? If a difference, what is the relation of the one to the 
other ? Evil is evil, whether it be physical, intellectual, or spiritual ; 
it differs not in essence, but in intensity only. The distinction be- 
tween the two evils is one of convenience only ; it is not founded in 
any difference between the evils themselves, so that an account of one 
will serve as an account of the other. Natural evil is only the grosser 
form of the wrong spirit in the universe, and attaches itself to physical 
objects, while moral evil is the refined type of the same spirit, afflicting 
the minds and souls of men. If natural evil is under law and the prod- 
uct of law, so is moral evil. If there are uses to which natural evil 
may be devoted, there are uses to which moral evil may be devoted. 
As showing the intimate relation of the two, natural evil is often em- 
ployed to serve moral ends, and moral evils sometimes are made to 
contribute to natural ends. It is believed that cholera visits civilized 
countries once in seventeen years for moral ends; that commercial 
panics are affected by the spots on the sun ; that comets are the van- 
guard of trouble ; that earthquakes are intended to shake the people 
into a recognition of moral principles ; and that nature often disturbs 
the race in order to impress it with the thought of God. Trenching on 
superstition as these views may seem to do, it can not be resisted that 
natural evil is often the source of moral evil, and that the two are 
indissolubly related. The ancient theologian was disposed to attribute 



EVIL A DISCIPLINE. 487 

all evil, both natural and moral, to the forensic sin of Adam ; and Mil- 
ton, adopting the sentiment, echoed it in lofty phrase until it became 
the current doctrine of the Church ; but is not the truth exactly the 
reverse, namely, that moral evil is the result of natural evil, and 
that natural evil is the result of the constitution of things? Evil is 
the constitutional disorder of the universe. Moral evil is the con- 
tagion of natural evil, the outgrowth and reality of constitutional 
possibilities. 

There was a time when it was important to vindicate the goodness 
and holiness of God in the presence of evil, for it was assumed that 
in some way it compromised the perfections of the Deity. Dr. A. T. 
Bledsoe, seeing the inconsistency of the implication, defends the attri- 
butes of God in a masterly exposition of the principles of the divine 
government ; but it occurs to us that such vindication is no longer 
necessary. A mistake is made in involving the divine perfections in 
the problem ; the problem can only include the divine ideas or pur- 
poses in reference to the human race. Eliminating the perfections, 
and including only the divine purposes, the relation of evil to 
the universe has an explanation, and that explanation is God's 
vindication. 

If, instead of regarding evil as the result of broken law, it is re- 
garded as the result of executed law, its explanation will be still more 
definite. Evil is sometimes a penalty and sometimes a discipline. 
As a penalty, it is always the result of enforced law. A murderer 
violates law ; the violated law does not punish him ; if the punish- 
ment is the sting of conscience, then a moral law is executed ; or, in 
other words, an executed rather than a broken law is the source of 
his affliction ; if he must suffer capital punishment, it is not by virtue 
of the law he violated. Another law, which he did not violate at all, 
hangs him. Wherever evil is suffered as a penalty, it is by virtue 
of executed law, which implies the authority of the law-maker in 
the land. 

As a discipline, evil must be considered on other grounds. The 
earlier Calvinian schools were inclined to interpret evil only as a 
penalty ; but evidently this is too narrow a view of it, since infants, 
not having sinned, and animals, not having violated any law, are the 
subjects of suffering, the explanation of which can not be referred to 
the word penalty. The final causes of evil are not penal but moral. 
Suffering has a mission. It is not inflicted always as a punishment. 
Advocating it as a penalty, the theologians had to rescue God from 
ungracious imputations, and save the world from pessimism ; but the 
task was too great. Evil as a discipline, or with moral ends in view, 
makes a theodicy possible. It is the turning of the immoral into 



488 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

moral uses, as night is made to serve certain benevolent purposes 
in nature. 

Following the course of evil in its assaults upon the Church- or 
the movements of Christianity, one is astonished at the beneficent 
result. As an organized agency for the spread of Christianity, the 
Church has been the target of enmity since the days of the divine 
Founder ; its pathway has been marked with blood, and i-ts history is 
full of flame and suffering. Even in the days of its greatest con- 
quests, paganism resisted its advances with defiant contradiction, and 
its progress has ever been over obstacles so numerous and so great 
that one wonders that the Church is a living institution to-day, and 
can account for it on no other ground than that it is stronger than 
evil. Think of the martyrdom that occupies so prominent a place in 
the world's history, of the cruel laws against Christians, of mobs, 
fagots, dungeons, and gladiatorial sports, all directed and employed 
for the extinction of the rising faith and the suppression of the 
Church. Evil, in its historic relations to the Church, is seen on a 
stupendous scale ; organized and palpitating with hate, it undertakes 
to destroy the only institution whose chief object is the salvation of 
the world. To explain evil as a penalty will not explain its assaults 
upon Christianity or the Church, any more than it will explain the 
sufferings of animals and infants. To assert that God builds his 
Church for high moral ends, and then engages evil to try to destroy 
it, as a punishment for sins it never committed, is so palpable an ab- 
surdity that it is mere trifling to notice it; and yet certain old-time 
theologians embraced the absurdity with as much sincerity as if it had 
been a truth. 

The explanation of the illicit relations of evil with the Church is 
in the moral ends finally wrought out by Christianity itself. The 
testing of Christianity as a system of religion was at stake in these 
historic oppositions; they were permitted in order to prove Christian- 
ity, and they did establish it as true in the eyes of the world. 
Polemical discussions of Christianity were insufficient to vindicate it 
from aspersion and misconstruction ; logical abstractions and analytic 
definitions of truth did not overcome the doubt and rancor of the 
opposition ; even the saintly lives of Christ's followers were robbed 
of their force by false report ; but the survival of Christianity in spite 
of the malice and trial of eighteen centuries is the refutation of all opposi- 
tion, and the prophecy of its future. The use of trial in the establish- 
ment of religion is therefore justified. 

On a smaller scale, but with the same purpose in view, the Chris- 
tian is the subject of trial, and ripens only as he is disciplined. The 
Christian hero is impossible except in a world of conflict. Patience 



DISTINCTIONS REQUIRED. 489 

is possible only amid an irritating environment. Virtue is possible 
where vice is possible also. Right character is possible only in pro- 
portion as wrong character is possible. The afflictions of the right- 
eous are intended to establish him in the faith, to test his integrity, 
to prove to him the truth of what he believes. The whole brood of 
evils, from martyrdom down to the slightest ridicule, from flames to 
a finger raised in derision, from death to the smallest slander, is in- 
tended to make strong the believer in God, and to build up the Church 
with fire-proof material, that it may stand throughout all ages. Dis- 
cipline explains temptation, affliction, ignorance; it explains man's 
pitiful lot and his hopeful future. Drummond calls the evil in man 
a " retrogade principle," to overcome which even more than atone- 
ment is necessary. Atonement by Jesus Christ is the initial and 
fundamental support of the Christian life ; but in a sense the human 
subject must atone himself for sin and work out his own salvation by 
the discipline of suffering. What we call evil, therefore, may be atone- 
ment for evil, as it certainly is discipline by evil. In one of his voyages 
Captain Cook landed on one of the Friendly Islands, whose inhabit- 
ants were so ignorant of the nature of animals in general that on see- 
ing the sheep and goats in the ship they called them birds. We smile 
at their ignorance, but our ignorance of what are evils and what are 
not may be as dense as was theirs of the animal kingdom. Disciplin- 
ary events, or trials, helping men to holier living, may not be evils at 
all, as sheep are not birds. 

In the attempt to explain evil as a discipline, we almost pass be- 
yond the border-land of evil, and find ourselves in another region 
of fact. Suffering is not necessarily an evil. Darkness is not light, 
but it may be as useful as the light. Death is not to be compared 
with life, but death is not an unmixed evil. An extremist might 
deny the existence of evil, but as a disciplinary instrument it over- 
comes the evil intent and contributes to the world's progress and hap- 
piness. Considering evil as a penalty it is just, and, therefore, no 
compromise of the divine government; as a discipline, admitting 
its existence as evil, it vindicates itself, and requires no further ex- 
planation. 

The relation of evil to the theistic hypothesis is of more impor- 
tance than its relation to the divine perfections. Is evil consistent 
with the idea of Deity at all ? One studying the world from the ma- 
terialistic standpoint might conclude that it is in anarchy and without 
a moral ruler; but the reverse is the truth. That evil follows the track 
of causation is proof that a higher power has imposed upon it the restraints, 
and given it the direction, of law. With this view the theistic hypoth- 
esis is easily maintainable. But this is not the all-important point at 



490 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

this time. Evil exists as an apparent disturber of divine plans and 
ideas. This is the evil of evil. So far forth as it succeeds in effecting 
a collapse of a divine idea, it is evil; but so far forth as it fails to 
undermine a divine idea, evil does not result, although the conflict 
with it may be painful and protracted. If divine ideas are working 
out their lawful results, it is proof that a divine being is at the 
helm of the universe. As these plans broaden and eventuate in 
reality, evil is circumscribed, defeated, and destroyed. The shadow 
of the Infinite presses hard upon the darkness of sin, and ever drives 
it toward its last resting-place. The conflict of evil and righteous- 
ness is apparent in all history and attested by all experience ; but, as 
it goes on, the turning of victory on the side of righteousness is vis- 
ible, and God comes out of the shadows and dazzles the eyes of men 
with the brightness of his glory. In these triumphs over evil the 
reign of divine authority is as conspicuous as the virulence of the 
enmity that disputes it. Looking at the general trend of human 
history toward righteousness and the perpetual tendency of the world, 
so to speak, to right itself, the conclusion of divine rule is satis- 
factory, and the hope of the final triumph of truth is well-grounded 
in those probabilities which the providential government continually 
inspires. 

Evil has its hour, its apparent triumph, but its destruction- is 
foretold by the sacred writers, and is one of the animating purposes 
of Jesus Christ. He came to destroy the works of the devil. Wide 
as has been the desolation of evil, infectious and self-propagating as 
it is by nature, it has been circumscribed, and its progress stayed. 
Its future disappearance is one of the predicted certainties of Chris- 
tianity. A true theodicy has only to recognize the purposes of God 
respecting its manifested power in order to escape metaphysical incon- 
sistencies and justify its presence in the world. If it is God's purpose 
utterly to destroy it, leaving no trace of its existence in the universe, 
he is exhaustively vindicated from all reproach, and stands before 
his creatures as guiltless of all sin,. The framer of a theodicy must 
confine himself to divine purposes, as the key to the divine character; but 
the early theologians felt that the divine character must on a priori 
grounds be first studied and supported ; hence, the weakness of theodicy in 
general. 

If it is one of the divine purposes to extinguish evil, as Chris- 
tianity affirms it is, a bold thinker might wonder why it takes so long 
to do it, especially when the infinity of the divine resources is con- 
sidered. This reflects somewhat on the tardiness or inefficiency of the 
divine methods, and calls for explanation. No theodicy is possible 
that attempts to build itself on the divine administration alone or on 



THE DIVINE ALTERNATIVE. 491 

God's relation to the world. Man is an important factor in the great 
problem, is as essential to it as God. The freedom of man is the 
explanation of the slow evolution of the world into holiness. Man is re- 
sponsible for present sin. With the divine agencies at his command 
and the lessons of human experience as inspirations, he might re- 
move evil from the face of the earth. Freedom invests man with 
wonderful power and corresponding responsibility ; it is for him to 
say how long evil shall continue its ruinous work in the world. This 
goes back to the constitution of things, and raises the question, Why 
is man free if freedom involves not only the possibility of evil, but 
its certainty? Before the divine mind there was the alternative 
to create a race, holy in nature and restrained from sin, and, there- 
fore, mechanically constrained to righteousness, or to create a race 
with a free-will, implying all the possibilities and certainties of evil, 
with the ability through grace to overcome it, and stand before their 
Maker as the voluntary subjects of holiness. The divine Ruler pre- 
ferred the latter ; hence, man is free ; and, being free, he sins, and, 
sinning, he delays God's idea of holiness, and, that idea delayed, man 
suffers and death reigns. God is responsible for making men free ; 
men are responsible for abusing their freedom to their own degradation. 

Further examination enables us to conclude that evil, understood 
in its relations to time and eternity, has a bearing on one of the most 
dreadful doctrines of Christianity, namely, that of hell, or future re- 
tribution, against which materialism has spoken with fierce and angry 
tones, and in evident revolt against the truth. That the doctrine is 
Biblical, it goes without saying. Is it a true doctrine? The scientific 
method of proof would require its vindication from natural religion, 
or the teachings of nature ; for, if nature foreshadows the principle 
of retribution, the Christian religion can not be impugned if it 
teaches it openly. 

No scientist doubts the orthodoxy of nature respecting the law of 
suffering and punishment. The physical world, with its unchanging 
laws, is regarded by materialists as a testimony against the doctrine 
of a benevolent Ruler ; for these laws are never suspended in the in- 
terest of man, and his history is one of incessant struggle with them. 
On the whole, nature is declared to be against man. He, therefore, 
suffers. Whether this be a true view or not, it should prove to the 
materialist that, if the God of nature has so arranged the physical 
universe as to produce suffering, it makes not against the God of the 
Bible if it is proven that he has so arranged the spiritual universe as 
to be productive of suffering also. If the natural world is ceaselessly 
active in inflicting suffering, the spiritual world may be ceaselessly 
active in inflicting it also. The grim testimony of nature is not, 



492 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

therefore, against the doctrine of future retribution, and the God of 
the Bible can not be condemned any more than the God of nature. 

The fact of evil in this life may be suggestive of evil in the next 
life. What is the evil of this life ? Natural evil, or the evil of en- 
vironment, the cause of untold suffering from the cradle to the grave; 
moral evil, or the evil of personality, the cause of subjective misery 
and death. The evil of condition and character here may portend 
the evil of condition and character there. If the eternal condition 
has in it the possibility of evil, it has also the possibility of hell ; and 
if it involves the certainty of evil, it involves the certainty of hell. 

If personal character, once formed, is irreversible, having in it 
the potency of evil, what is to hinder hell from becoming a personal 
experience? "Myself am hell," says Milton's Satan. 

What are the conclusions? 

1. Christianity fully recognizes the origin, potency, and influence of 
evil in the universe. Emerson makes little of sin, but Jesus Christ 
makes much of it. 

2. Evil is the possibility of the constitution of things, without involv- 
ing the divine government in imperfection or reproach. 

3. As a constitutional disorder, evil is under law, and is the prod- 
uct of law. 

4. The distinction between natural and moral evil is puerile, and 
can have no place in a true theodicy. 

5. A constitutional disorder, its final cause is a providential pur- 
pose, and, instrumentally, it serves a providential mission. 

6. Employed as an instrument, God's character is not involved in 
its activities or results. The basis of theodicy is not God's character, 
but God's purposes. 

7. Evil has a place in the category of realities as a penalty, and, 
as such, it is just ; it must be viewed also as a discipline, and, as such, 
the gains from it have exceeded the losses ; it is also a partial atone- 
ment for sin, which, joined to the atonement of Jesus Christ, affords 
an adequate remedy for the world's inclination to wrong. 

8. The history of evil furnishes proof of the existence of God, 
and its gradual extinction is evidence of the reign of divine wisdom, 
and the authority of a divine purpose. 

9. The continued existence of sin is no reflection on the character 
of God, but is proof of the freedom of man. Man, not God, is re- 
sponsible for sin. 

10. As evil is the possibility of the constitution of the universe, 
so hell is the possibility of the constitution of evil. 



SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION. 493 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE IDEAL SOCIETY; OR THE RELATION OK CHRIS- 
TIANITY TO SOCIETY. 

TO the thought of the historic Greeks, the millennium or golden 
age of mankind had, long before their day, arrived and departed, 
never to return; it was participated in by their godlike ancestors, 
who were a superior race, and specially favored by the supreme 
powers. As to the future of the world, they anticipated stagnation 
of political forces, decay of the best civilizations, degradation of social 
order, arrest of individual development, and the appearance of an 
inferior race of human beings, whose history would end in colossal 
convulsions and final and exhaustive exterminations. The tone of 
Grecian prophecy is leaden, sepulchral, uninvigorating. 

Taught by a truer inspiration, the ancient Jew reversed the dark 
anticipations of the Greek, holding that the Past was the age of in- 
feriority, limitation, incipiency, while the bow of promise spanned 
the future, and illuminated the eye-ball of nations. The tone of 
Jewish prophecy is sanguine and assuring, and, by its incorporation 
into Christianity, it has become the stronghold of faith respecting 
man and the future— a view that sweeps away pessimism, stimulates 
philosophy to right thinking, quickens the indifferent energies of 
slow-going peoples, and floods the world with optimistic thoughts of 
the race's development. 

It is not our purpose, at this moment, to describe the future man, 
or indicate the peculiarities of future civilizations, under the operation 
of either philosophy or Christianity, or both, as this will appear in 
the later and larger discussion of the subject ; but, first of all, to con- 
sider if an ideal state, in an experimental or absolute form, is at all 
possible, and whether it may be realized sooner and more permanently 
through Christianity than by any philosophical system or basis of life. 
In other words, must systems of sociology rest upon a purely philo- 
sophical or theological basis? 

Whether naturalistic or super naturalistic agencies must be chief 
in social reconstructions, we shall learn in this review. No less than 
eight distinctive theoretical or experimental ideas or bases of human 
society, a brief notice of which can only be given here, human his- 
tory furnishes for our instruction and guidance. 

I. Perhaps as prominent as any, and certainly more forceful 



494 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

than many, is the ecclesiastical idea of human society. To this, in the 
general, and so far as it partakes of, or borrows its spirit from, apos- 
tolic ideals, no exception can be taken ; but, in searching and fol- 
lowing the historic development and application of the idea, we come 
in contact with strange ecclesiasticisms, embodying centralization, in- 
tolerance, and stagnation, and appearing in our day as the monu- 
mental forms of bigoted force. Three such ecclesiasticisms readily 
occur to us. The Roman Catholic conception of human society 
concreted in the eleventh century in Hildebrand, than whom a more 
aggressive and successful exponent of papal ideas and papal policies 
never lived. Long before he assumed the miter, he was the acknowl- 
edged influence in the circles of the Church, and began even early in 
his monastic career to meditate upon a scheme for the consolidation 
of political and spiritual power that has not been paralleled in human 
annals ; and, under his own administration, the consolidation was 
virtually effected. He conceived that the pope should be the ruler 
in temporal, no less than in spiritual, affairs ; that he should be the 
head of the Church, infallible in his ecclesiastical judgments, and that 
all temporal rulers should pay him homage and tribute, and that the 
whole world should regard him as its lawful potentate and as God's 
vicegerent on earth. The scheme was magnificent in outline, and 
plausible as a proclamation. It meant the priority of the Church in 
all things, temporal and spiritual ; it meant the heroic domination 
of Christian ideas in civil governments ; it meant one source of au- 
thority and uniformity of rule throughout the world ; it meant unity 
of civilizations, unity of social structures, unity of religious worship, unity 
of human responsibility. Vast, heroic, magnificent, as the scheme was, 
it was not without serious internal weaknesses, which manifested 
themselve, like incurable diseases, as it was unfolded and executed. 
It possessed heterogeneous elements, which interfered with its applica- 
tion ; it wrought out its anticipated unities, not by spontaneous and 
natural methods, but by force, which alienated instead of cementing 
them; aggressive in its purpose, it became oppressive in its plans; 
unyielding to circumstances, it awakened resistance, and, instead of 
giving peace, it produced war. For a period accepted, human society 
degenerated under its authority ; the Bible was unopened to the 
masses ; ignorance was a virtue ; absolution from sin became pur- 
chasable ; martyrdoms multiplied ; kings and parliaments violated 
compacts with Rome ; kings were unkinged ; parliaments were dis- 
solved ; human legislation was rebuked, and legislators were defied ; 
and such were the tumults, frictions, conflicts of authority, general 
degradation of the people, poverty, crime, social disorders, persecu- 
tions, and bigotries that it produced, that a protest of the nations 



POLITICAL ECCLESIASTICISMS. 495 

was made against it in the form of a Reformation. The Roman 
Catholic idea of religious centralization has demonstrated its unfitness 
and inability in its historical trial. 

Under Henry VIII. the ecclesiastical idea tended to a similar result, 
but beiug narrower in its range, and avoiding some of the conceded 
errors of the papal scheme, it never rounded, out in complete develop- 
ment. However, in its thought of the centralization of religious 
power ; in its selfish conception of one visible Church, the sole ruler 
in religious affairs; and in its claim of antecedent connection with 
the apostolic or original Church, it was not less vehement than its 
predecessor, the Roman Catholic hierarchy. As to the supremacy 
of ecclesiastical authority in temporal governments, and the subjection 
of the people to its social order, the Episcopal scheme is less ob- 
jectionable than the other. Still, wherever the consolidation of 
the temporal and spiritual has been at all a possibility, as to some 
extent in England, the result has been religious proscription, a heter- 
ogeneous civilization, and a divided government. Not under this 
milder type of Hildebrand's scheme is a reconstruction of society 
desirable, for in effect it means the same thing. 

In the American colonies there appeared a peculiar ecclesiasticism, 
different from the preceding in some particulars, but kindred to them 
by a common idea, namely, Puritanism. Without recalling our 
colonial history, it is sufficient to report that the Puritanic idea was 
for a season in power in the New England portion of the country, 
and that its chief purpose was to secure unity of civilization by con- 
formity to enacted religious and social ideas and methods, all of which 
had to be accepted at the peril of one's life. It is not denied that 
Puritanism bore fruit. The claim that our civilization is indebted to 
it we care not to dispute. What we now affirm is that the Puri- 
tanic idea can not be the final or beau ideal idea of society ; that its 
very intolerance was suicidal ; that it was a political and religious 
scheme which in the long run had to be exchanged for something 
better. What it did with Roger Williams it would do with all dis- 
senters. Hence, it was illiberal, and denied to man the right of 
private judgment, and the free exercise of all God-given privileges. 
Bancroft speaks of it as ''the reign of the visible Church," but it 
was the political rather than the religious reign of the Church. Of 
the theologic aspects of Puritanism we shall not speak ; nor of its 
philosophic bearings on human society ; but, as a political and social 
force, it failed as utterly as the ecclesiasticisms heretofore mentioned. 
Indeed, it actually perished, while the others still maintain an ap- 
pearance of life, but under very paralyzing conditions. 

These three ecclesiasticisms in their recognition of the unity of 



496 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the race, the unity of the Church, and the unity of civilization have 
a justification ; but the weakness common to them all was the at- 
tempted enforcement of centralized political and religious power 
under the sacred guise of the doctrine of unity. Both religion and phi- 
losophy agree touching unity ; but these ecclesiasticisms secretly plotted 
for political unity, or civil power, under the name of religious unity. 
Of the theology and the philosophy of the ecclesiastical establish- 
ments we have not spoken adversely ; it is the social and political re- 
sults that we enumerate as evidences of their unfitness as social and 
political forces in the world's civil regeneration. 

II. If not on the ecclesiastical idea, may not society be reared 
on the political idea ? What the political idea is, history defines, and 
concerning its adaptation to the social state history is equally positive. 
Certain political ideas must enter into the constitution of the public 
state, as the duties of reciprocity, the laws of political economy, the 
equality of civil rights, and the distribution of political favors, but 
what political form of government will promote these and other 
political ends must not be determined too hastily. An appeal 
to historic political forms, the illustrations of the political idea, will 
aid in the solution of the problem. At least three separate political 
results will reward our search after historical examples. In the 
early stages of human society the political idea took a barbarous 
complexion and built itself up in despotic and monarchical forms, the 
remains of which appear in modern Asiatic and African tribal 
governments. The authority of might had its final illustration in 
the splendid civilizations of Babylon and Egypt, which after a sturdy 
existence suddenly passed away. Earlier than these were the crude 
political fabrics of savages and pagans, whose ideas of human rela- 
tionship were subordinated to the one thought of dominion, self- 
preservation, and self-gratification. But neither the coarse nor the 
refined political barbarisms of the ancient days; neither men who 
fought with clubs nor those who gracefully cast their spears, are 
true types of government or manhood. As far as the animal king- 
dom of to-day is in advance of cephalopods, so far are our political 
forms beyond the barbarian's idea of social government. Study 
these forms, however. 

The royal political idea, the rule by divine right — what is this 
but a political deception ? The test of a political system is not ex- 
actly its power to endure, for the old pagan civilizations endured 
many centuries, but at last succumbed to the attrition of forces more 
inherently pregnant with life than they. By virtue of the royal 
political idea, kingdoms vast and civilizations magnificent have been 
the product ; and it is idle to deny that many of them have seemed 



NAPOLEON'S SCHEME OF CONSOLIDATION 497 

to perform a providential mission, having fostered the great ends of 
government: viz., the education of the people, the establishment of 
religious worship, the reduction of temporal evils, and the promotion 
of individual rights. Conceding the superiority of the royal to the 
barbarian policy, both in its purpose and achievement, it is not clear 
that the one any more than the other is the ideal of human govern- 
ment. It is clear that the royal idea must be finally displaced, as 
one stratum is by another, in the great future of the world. Asia 
and Africa furnish monuments of the barbarians political idea; 
Europe points to the . reign and ruin of the royal political idea. The 
latter has been on trial in every European nation, to the final disad- 
vantage of all ; for ignorance, pauperism, crime, irreligion, and revo- 
lution are all but universal. At this very hour, such is the outcry 
against the modern political idea of government that thrones are 
shaking, kings trembling, and revolutions are imminent. Nihilism 
and Socialism are mocking the royal idea. Neither the authority of 
might, nor the authority of divine right, as crystallized in a govern- 
mental form, furnishes a sufficient basis for the political and social 
structure. 

The third political idea is different from the ethers, both in its 
nature and extent. Napoleon conceived the mammoth project of ex- 
tending the boundaries of the French Empire to the European limits, 
of consolidating a continent under one government, thus securing 
political unity and uniformity of social order. That in his thinking 
he went beyond this scheme, which he vainly endeavored to realize, 
and mused over the consolidation of all kingdoms into one, can not 
be questioned. The conception of such a consummation may be due 
to Napoleon's genius for the entertainment of great ideas ; but, as a 
political project, put in motion, and for a time marching on to suc- 
cess, it is perfectly astounding. Hildebrand's scheme of consolidation 
was quasi spiritual and for spiritual ends; Napoleon's scheme was 
political and for political ends. *Both were magnificent; both were 
in process of execution ; both excited the fear of the world ; both 
failed. Force was the method employed by both — a lesson that the 
unity of the world in ideal conditions can not be secured by the 
coercive method. In these we reach the antipodes of the idea of 
governmental unity, the one assuming spiritual unity and the other 
political unity, as the ideal of human condition. 

The dream of one civilization, or the centralization of political 
power in one headship, was not original with the French ruler, nor 
was his attempt at its realization the first made by political dreamers. 
No less a conception than universal rule and the conversion of con- 
tinents into provinces of the Macedonian Empire was the palpitating 

32 



498 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

hope of Alexander the Great, who, like the "he-goat" of Daniel, 
waxed strong and pushed in all directions, conquering all nations, and 
Wept when there was none to reduce to submission. At his death 
the massive kingdom fell to pieces, a proof that the experiment was 
artificial, and the cohesive spirit inanimate and dead. A more serv- 
iceable illustration of a world-wide political unity, or conformity to 
one governmental idea, is that of the Roman world under Augustus, 
who made Roman citizenship a coveted respectability, and Roman 
arms a terror to the most distant foes. This political achievement is 
more nearly the analogue of Hildebrand's conception of the univer- 
sality of spiritual authority under one headship than Napoleon's bril- 
liant, but unsuccessful attempt. Though enduring for centuries, at 
last, from internal enfeebling causes, it perished like Alexander's 
short-lived and more nominal universal sovereignty. Neither the 
colossal experiment of founding a spiritual headship for the world, 
nor the oft-repeated attempt at organizing all nations into one king- 
dom under one political authority, has had permanent success, or 
demonstrated the feasibility or necessity of either. While, however, 
these failures have been conspicuous, it should not be forgotten that 
in the ideal society the idea of unity must have a place, and that 
the scheme of unity, in order to achievement, must be in perfect 
harmony with the idea of unity. Both Hildebrand and Napoleon 
failed in their schemes; the idea still remains. 

III. To what extent shall the philosophical idea dominate in human 
society ? Is there a philosophical idea around which government may 
grow? We must lose sight of the theological ideas of the philoso- 
phers, since, so far as they are theological, they belong to the domain 
of religion, and will be considered as such at the proper time, as the 
atheism of Epicurus, the moral code of Seneca, the mythology of 
Socrates, and the ethics of Spencer. But the philosophical systems 
of ancient and modern thinkers, so far as they relate to the regula- 
tion of human life, and contain suggestions touching the governmental 
order of society, we may investigate with reference to their fitness as 
social and governmental forces. 

One example from the ancients, and one from the moderns, will 
be quite sufficient for our purpose. More than all others of his day, 
Plato undertakes to describe the ideal society, insisting that it will 
be under the influence of the philosophic spirit, that the governors 
will be philosophers, and that laws will be enacted in accordance 
with philosophic considerations. A "philosophic race," he observes, 
V must have the government of the state," or miseries will never cease. 

To this view, then, let us appeal. In his Republic this philosophic 
social system is revealed in all its details, with much of beauty in de- 



WRECKED COMMUNISTIC ATTEMPTS. 499 

scription, and not a little virtue in suggestion. In his Laws the 
reader will find, indeed, laws covering human conduct to its minutest 
acts, and regulating life to its smallest obligations. Taking the two 
together he will find Plato's system entire, with its virtues and blem- 
ishes, which have been enumerated in the first chapter of this book. 

The admirers of Plato's scheme have been many, but attempts to 
reduce it to practical operation, or to institute a society in conformity 
to certain supposed ideal conditions, have been fruitless, except as they 
demonstrated the unwisdom of the scheme itself. Sir Thomas More's 
Utopia, like Plato's Republic, was a suggestive ideal, but never re- 
duced to experiment ; on the other hand, the Harmonites, a pious 
people under the leadership of Mr. Rapp, located in Indiana and 
organized a community under the inspiration of a Utopian conception. 
Far more commendable was the experiment than Plato's speculative 
republic; for it maintained the family idea, divided labor, and exer- 
cised a common and equal care over all its subjects. The despotism 
of leadership, the unity of interest, the absence of individual ambi- 
tion, the repression of religious inquiry, and a forced social conform- 
ity were the weaknesses to which it finally yielded under the more 
pretentious superintendence of Mr. Owen. 

According to Josephus the Essenes were a sectarian organization, 
dominated by the spirit of self-abnegation, and having in view only 
the larger weal of the whole in place of the development and happi- 
ness of the individual. Provisionally, too, it may be allowed that the 
early Christians adopted, and for a brief period observed, a Utopian 
plan in the surrender of their wealth to a common fund, and in the 
recognition of the equality of each in the social inheritance. Whether 
the philosophical suggestion of an isolated or communistic organization 
has been accepted and observed in a religious or purely political way, 
the result in all cases has been the same — the decline of individual 
character, the withering of the social functions, and at .last the de- 
cadence of the social system itself. 

Very different, if not the opposite, are the philosophical recom- 
mendations of Herbert Spencer touching the problems of sociology. The 
author of evolution affects to see in it the key to the development of a 
perfect social structure from which all evil will be eliminated, and in 
which the individual will attain his largest consciousness. He recom- 
mends no isolated organization for the trial of his suggestion ; he recom- 
mends no trial at all of his theory, but points to history itself as both an 
•illustration and a vindication of the evolutionary process in the expul- 
sion of evil and the regeneration of the social order. With skillful 
hand he traces the slow evanescence of vices, diseases, and disorders in hu- 
man history, and the natural working of better agencies for the elevation, 



500 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

education, and improvement of man, and on the historic basis of 
progress, whether the agencies to be employed be enumerated or 
omitted, he justifies faith in future progress until the social struc- 
ture will contain more of good than evil, and frictions and hin- 
drances be reduced to the smallest number, without power to pre- 
vent in any individual life the attainment of its true destiny. As 
this view of the future is in accord with the prophetic purpose of 
Christianity, it can not be resisted ; but in the consideration of the 
agencies that must promote the purposes Mr. Spencer is singularly 
out of harmony, not only with theologians, but with statesmen, and 
thinkers of all schools, except those of his own. Evading the relig- 
ious influence in the culture and development of man, it is fundamental 
with him that the law of life is such as in its very nature to produce 
aspirations and ambitions for better conditions, and that, as there has 
been an evolution of physical structures, so there will be an evolu- 
tion of social structures, the last always superior to that which 
preceded it. By means of natural agencies, therefore, there will finally 
appear a social system, perfect in morals, perfect in industrial energy, 
perfect in the culture of men, accomplishing ideal ends in an ideal 
way, the whole the result of the evolutionary order inaugurated from 
the beginning. Conscience, mind, and soul will by evolutionary pro- 
cesses become perfect mechanically operating forces, as by similar 
processes the human body and physical organisms have attained their 
present harmony and beauty. 

To other philosophic theories respecting society we must omit all 
reference; and of these mentioned it is quite enough to say that, as 
Plato's never was reduced to practice in all its details, so Spencer's 
has never had, and never can have, an independent trial, for even if 
the evolutionary process be recognized, it must include the religious 
factor, to which modern society, if it be superior to the ancient, is 
indebted more than to all other agencies combined. Evolution with- 
out religion is as speculative as materialism without God. 

IV. The scientific idea of society is quite as specific and individual 
as any of the preceding. An examination of what it teaches or pro- 
poses is, therefore, next in order. Mr. Buckle is chosen as the ex- 
ponent of the materialistic interpretation of civilization, for the reason 
that, though not its original advocate, he has applied it with more 
distinctness and made it more plausible than any previous writer of 
his school. According to this apostle of materialism, civilization, 
whether massive, as in Egypt ; refined, as in Greece ; vacillating, as 
in Spain; or vital and vigorous, as in Scotland, is the result of ma- 
terial forces, to which both pagan and civilized must yield dominion. 
Man is not above nature. His " conquest of nature" is a flattering 



PHYSIOLOGICAL LAW OF CIVILIZATION. 501 

phrase, whose interior meaning is that he has put himself in harmony 
with nature. Nature's laws may be discovered, used ; they are never con- 
quered ; nature's forces are not overcome, but turned to the produc- 
tion of ends. By virtue of obedience to laws, forces, and material 
conditions, mankind rise, since they all portend progress, if obeyed, 
and destruction, if disobeyed. Civilizations have originated in conform- 
ity to material forces, and disappeared in contention with or violation 
of such forces, leaving their wrecks to tell the mournful story of their 
non-adjustment to environment as the secret of their downfall. No 
difference what the civilization, or social structure, or governmental 
form, its true test is this of material force, or the relation of material 
energy to governmental vitality. Culture and religion, or the ideas of 
divine providence and intellectual force, are subordinate to the uni- 
versal laws of natural order and development. In this view the lower 
explains the higher ; the higher is the slave of the lower. The do- 
minion of man, as lord of creation, is surrendered to the dominion of 
nature, as the primal force in all things. To this kind of material- 
ism, reversing the historic order of national development, and elim- 
inating religious agency, the most potent of all, does the scientific idea 
in Buckle's hands conduct us. The refutation of the materialistic 
hypothesis of civilization is the history of civilization itself, which 
points to the decay of all governmental institutions, whose elemental 
strength was in material force, or which, among the instrumental 
causes of growth and apparent stability, was sovereign. Not a civili- 
zation exists which grounded itself exclusively in the lower forces. What is 
true of materialistic civilization is also true of civilizations mixed, 
or those in which, while other elements were apparently constitu- 
tional, the vital force was physical, or, at the least, neither intellec- 
tual nor religious. No institution or government, without the relig- 
ious force, can overcome the gravity of the lower forces. Buckle 
reduces the problem of national greatness to a problem of geograph- 
ical conditions ; but no nation can stand long on a little geography. 
Dr. J. W. Draper handles more astutely the scientific idea in its 
reference to the problems of civilization, marshaling an army of facts 
in support of it, but arriving at a conclusion almost as unsatisfactory 
as that that follows Buckle's generalization. Human society, in his 
careful estimation of its history, seems to observe a physiological law of 
development, passing through various stages from the beginning to 
the end, as an individual passes from one period of life to another 
until his mission is accomplished. He compares national life to in- 
dividual life, assigning to the former : 1. An Age of Credulity ; 2. An 
Age of Inquiry ; 3. An Age of Faith ; 4. An Age of Reason ; 5. An 
Age of Decrepitude, — which correspond to infancy, childhood, youth, 



502 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

manhood, and age in the latter. That this physiological interpretation 
of civilization has its justification in the history of society, must be 
admitted; for the exceptions to this general order of initiation, prog- 
ress, and decadence in national life are rare and unimportant. We 
make nothing in Dr. Draper's interpretation of the omission of Chris- 
tianity as a vital principle in civilization ; for, granting that without 
Christianity all great civilizations have decayed, and national forms 
have existed only for a period, it furnishes proof of the need of a new 
principle of national existence, which shall have the power to per- 
petuate a civilization until the end of time. His interpretation re- 
minds one of the Spanish navy, whose ships could not endure the 
recoil of their own guns. Out of his physiological law emerges the 
conclusion that civilization is in need of a higher principle, which shall 
arrest the tendency to decay, and promote national immortality. Ev- 
idently this principle is Christianity itself. 

V. Still another view of human society, foreign to the Christian 
hypothesis, is itself under the reign of the Socialistic idea. Two kinds 
of Socialism John Stuart Mill distinguishes — the one philosophical, 
represented by M. Fourier ; the other revolutionary, represented by 
the destructionists of all modern systems of organized government. 
Of the former he subscribes himself a friend, while confessing that 
the peculiar opinions of Fourier on marriage were independent of the 
principles of his industrial system. The virtue of philosophical So- 
cialism is in its regulation of the industrial interests of a community, 
or the adjustment of the differences and difficulties that occur between 
capital and labor ; but who will consent that industrial interests are 
supreme ? that they supersede in importance the domestic relations, 
public education, health, religious discipline, and the social economy? 
Mills's Socialism does not grasp the profounder interests of society ; 
Fourier's grasps but to overturn them ; so that philosophical socialism 
is, on the one hand, unadapted to the needs of society, and, on the 
other, it is a standing menace to its peace and order. 

From revolutionary socialism, which proposes to destroy the pro- 
prietary rights of the individual, and substitute a central government, 
which shall distribute the wealth of the nation to the inhabitants 
thereof, and override all other established institutions, secular, moral, 
and religious, Mr. Mill turns with horror, and pronounces it impolitic 
and impracticable. What, however, is the essential difference be- 
tween Fourier and Herr Most, the one philosophical, the other revo- 
lutionary, it is difficult to discover, as the introduction of the ideas of 
either into governmental affairs must result in demoralization and 
denationalization. A concession to the Socialistic idea can only result 
in social revolutions, unsettling the settled principles of the ages. 



WARNINGS FROM ROME. 503 

VI. More subversive of the social ideal than any of the preceding 
is, to use a comprehensive term, the pagan idea of human society, 
human institutions, and human achievements. As one of the reign- 
ing ideas in human history, it has been on trial the longest, dominat- 
ing in more countries than any other, and with every conceivable 
advantage in its favor ; and yet it does not appear to have elevated 
society from the low level of ignorance, superstition, degradation, and 
crime, or reformed the wicked masses, or inspired a desire for im- 
provement in the sages and leaders of the people. Under its poten- 
tial influence the social impulses withered, governments themselves 
stagnated, and whole nations stood still, a commentary on the weakness 
of the idea itself. Whether ancient Rome, or ancient Greece, or mod- 
ern India, or modern China be selected as the exponent of the pagan 
principle, the facts and conclusions will be the same, notwithstanding 
some variations in national development and historic relations may be 
discovered. Pagan Rome, inheriting a national principle, profoundly 
aggressive and apparently vital, expanded and outgrew its earlier 
self, becoming a terror to its own provinces, and threatened to absorb 
what little remained outside of itself. That this mammoth empire 
should dissolve, separating into fragments so small that not one can 
be identified, and for the most part itself, once the political absorbent, 
now absorbed by other national forms, is a standing fact of history. 
For the detailed causes of its overthrow, correctly given by Mr. Gib- 
bon, the reader is referred to the history of " The Decline and Fall 
of the Roman Empire ;" but for the present it is sufficient to point to 
two remaining monuments of the social character of ancient Rome as 
evidence of its internal weakness and certainty of decay, and to warn 
modern society against the revival of the pagan spirit. 

The Coliseum has too often been described by travelers to require 
any extended reference here ; its monumental meaning we alone 
desire to reveal. A vast structure, an elliptical figure whose exter- 
nal circumference measured five hundred and seventy-six yards, and 
diameter two hundred and five yards; with arched corridors, one 
hundred stairways, and four principal entrances ; which seated eighty- 
seven thousand people, and furnished standing-room for twenty 
thousand more; is in ruins, only one-third of it remaining. Having 
personally inspected it, the impressions it made upon us, as a sign of 
civilization happily ended, we can never forget, but we as readily 
recall them as when, looking down from the disfigured and crumbling 
galleries into the arena, we fancied we witnessed the gladiatorial scenes 
of other days re-enacted, and felt horror-stricken and profoundly dis- 
gusted. Here the gladiators entered ; there the wild beasts sprung 
from behind the gates; not distant, a passage-way for the dead was 



504 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

kept open ; and on butcheries of man and beast, on contests between 
slaves, and on the higher contests between faiths, represented by 
Christian and pagan antagonists, Rome complacently looked and ap- 
plauded. Rooms for the emperor and his family, from which the 
proceedings in the arena could be viewed ; seats for the patricians ; 
and accommodations for the multitude, signified the intense interest 
of royalty and the common people in the brutal scenes of the Coli- 
seum. Let the decaying structure stand for a civilization which 
had in itself the seeds of decay ; let the structure itself be one seed 
of decay. 

Pagan Rome, crystallized into cruelty, exhibited an equally ruin- 
ous tendency in another aspect of its social life. The Baths of Cara- 
calla, now a splendid mass of ruins, contrast with the stately signs 
of Roman coldness and inhumanity in the Coliseum. The one is 
repulsive ; the other, attractive. The one drew the multitudes as 
well as the nobles ; the other was visited only by senators and their 
families, or those above the plebeians. Built of thin brick, the bath 
houses contrasted with the rugged stone edifice of the gladiators. 
Besides rooms for bathing purposes, there were lecture and reading 
rooms, and picture galleries, and every arrangement and every com- 
fort was made to minister to the voluptuous and luxury-loving spirit 
of the higher classes. Even the statuary excited the licentious in- 
stincts of the visitors. Here tired senators resorted for enjoyment. 
The sexes bathed promiscuously. Here patricians spent days and 
nights in forgetfulness of their domestic relations, immersed in the 
unforbidden pleasures of a higher licentiousness than the polluted 
masses knew any thing of; but the law of purity was as inexorable 
in the one case as in the other. A civilization that is the outgrowth 
of the licentiousness of higher or lower classes is in violation of the 
divine ideal of the social structure, and can not survive ; thus Rome 
found herself undermined and enfeebled by her own vices, and ready 
to perish, long before the northern Vandal struck her a blow. The 
Coliseum represents the coarse and brutal instincts of pagan civiliza- 
tion ; the bath-house represents the voluptuous spirit of ancient life, 
which was even more ruinous than the other. 

In the absence of the religious principle, which is ever a restraint 
on man's cruelty, and a cure for love of pleasure, the old civilizations 
perished, a fearful warning to modern peoples, who think their happi- 
ness can consist only in abjuring righteousness. 

The symbols of ancient Grecian civilization, no less pagan in its 
essential significance, are the Parthenon, a temple of marble, and 
the Pnyx, the forum of oratory and eloquence ; both speaking of a 
people and a civilization that have perished. The disfigured friezes 



DECLINE OF PAGAN CIVILIZATIONS. 505 

of the temple still proclaim the name of Phidias ; the consecration of 
the building as the temple of Minerva reveals a religion of gods and 
goddesses as supreme in Grecian life ; the building whose construc- 
tion was superintended by Pericles speaks of an age of art, beauty, 
luxury, philosophy, and learning. The Pnyx, with its cyclopean 
boundary wall, seems almost to echo the eloquence that kindled the 
patriotism of the Greeks, and certainly impresses the visitor with the 
greatness of the civilization that produced it. 

Perhaps the truth is not so self-evident that art, poetry, philos- 
ophy, and eloquence, unaccompanied with a religious life, are as dan- 
gerous to national stability, and as certain to result in national 
overthrow, as the bolder and more cankerous forms of inhumanity 
and licentiousness. The Parthenon is as great a ruin as the Coliseum ; 
the Pnyx is as va'cant as the bath-house. Both social civilizations, 
the one essentially voluptuous and sense-serving, the other essentially 
and intellectually aspiring, fell into chaos from insufficient internal 
vitality, or the absence of a lofty, regenerating, preserving religious 
principle. 

The lesson is the same if the civilizations of China and India be 
subjected to the same analysis. In China, a principle of order result- 
ing in national perpetuity has undergirded the life of the people ; but 
order has been gained at the expense of progress. Stagnation is the 
characteristic of Chinese civilization ; a fatal condition, and far re- 
moved from an ideal achievement. In India the principle of caste 
has governed so absolutely that, until the rigid protest of another and 
more vitalizing civilization was heard, the nation was asleep and uncon- 
scious of power. Between the two civilizations one can not choose, 
for stagnation is no more destructive of progress than caste, and both 
are obstacles to a broad inquiry, to the doctrine of the unity of the 
race, and to expansion. The pagan idea of society has not in it a 
single ideal recommendation. 

VII. There remains for mention the Mohammedan idea of society, 
or a semi-Christian principle of civilization, which has manifested 
itself in that colossal government known as the Turkish Empire. In 
India the friction between exclusively pagan ideas, and the Moham- 
medan principle of divine sovereignty in human affairs, has prevented 
the free and full exhibition of the latter ; but in the empire of which 
it is the almost exclusive religion, just how it has affected the social 
life, and whether it is a sufficiently vital principle for human govern- 
ment, may be the more easily determined. No one traveling in 
Syria, or the Turkish provinces, would think of preferring Moham- 
medan civilization to the native Hindu types of society ; for, while 
the sovereign principle of Mohammedanism is divine, it is insufficient 



506 PHILOSOPHY AM) CHRISTIANITY. 

from its incompleteness. Moreover, the vitality of this faith is not 
the divine principle, but a superstitious corruption, which either robs 
the principle of its legitimate functions, or supplants it entirely with 
another principle. It is not the thought of God, but the thought of 
Mohammed as the prophet of God, that constitutes the strength, and, 
therefore, the weakness, of this religious civilization. The divine 
element, lost in the human, or having only formal acknowledgment, 
has ceased to invigorate the empire, and effected the prostration of 
its civilization beyond recovery. A false religion is as completely 
ruinous of social institutions and political governments, as any form 
of paganism, or the worst type of socialism. Turkey and Syria, 
Arabia and Egypt, under the sway of the Mohammedan principle, 
are as stagnant as China, and as corrupt as ancient Rome, and verify 
the statement that another religious principle is absolutely necessary 
to their political regeneration. 

After this survey of civilizations, ancient and modern ; after the 
contemplation of societies in which scientific, philosophical, and social- 
istic principles have been put in practice ; in view of the study of 
peoples governed largely by religious principles, mythological, semi- 
Christian, and Christian; and carefully considering the force of polit- 
ical ideas, as exemplified among barbarians and the enlightened, what 
conclusions may justly be announced ? Certainly no ideal society, 
government, or civilization has been found, either in ancient or mod- 
ern times, in Christendom or in Heathendom. Certainly no ideal prin- 
ciples, taken separately or in their combination, sufficient to restore 
society to an ideal condition, have been named, for under the opera- 
tion of whatever is esteemed best there has been decay. Certainly no 
ideal religions, with power to preserve from impurity and decline, 
have, amid the heterogeneous mass of faiths and worships we have 
traced, declared themselves. In vain we seek ideal conditions ; in 
vain we ask for ideal principles ; in vain we request ideal religions. 
Nothing ideal emerges from the true or false, the sincere or the hypo- 
critical, the permanent or transient, the stable or fluctuating, the re- 
ligious or irreligious, the ancient or modern, the radical or conserva- 
tive, the stationary or progressive. A search for the ideal is like the 
search after the philosopher's stone. 

Is there no ideal? Is the thought of it a dream, a mockery, a 
vanity? Must the restless, suffering world roll on, believing in a 
better state, and even pursuing a higher hope, only to find in the 
ages to come that it has repeated its history, and not advanced be- 
yond the fathers ? We assume there is an ideal ; we assume there 
are ideal principles, there is an ideal religion, there must be an ideal 
society in the future. Whence the dissatisfaction with social states, 



RECOGNITION OF INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS. 507 

as they are, if they are final ? Why schemes of reconstruction ? 
Why Plato's republican principles ? Why Socialism ? Why philos- 
ophy? Why religion? Why Christianity? Nations and social 
structures go down that something better may appear, and the palpi- 
tating principle of the universe is progress, apparent in. nature, 
history, civilization, religion, and Christianity. On social dissat- 
isfactions, on human aspirations, on national changes, on philo- 
sophic and religious grounds, we predicate the ideal, and insist that 
already ideal principles are at hand, and an ideal religion is in force, 
working silently but effectively for the realization of the ideal society. 
We refer to Christianity, not the corrupt forms, or the: corrupt relig- 
ious establishments which exist in its name, but to those religious 
truths and principles which, vitally incorporated into the life of the 
world, will regenerate and preserve it. The relation of Christianity, 
as the sovereign religious force, to the world's development and the 
world's fulfillment, must be patiently and exhaustively considered if 
we shall discover its ideal character, purpose, and possibility. 

That the requirements of the ideal state may be apprehended, and 
whether any thing short or outside of the Christian theory of life is 
adapted to promote them, it will be necessary carefully to consider 
the fundamental needs of society as they express themselves in uni- 
versal history. * 

First, the constant recognition of the individual rights of every member 
of society is imperative, and an inviolable condition of the ideal state. The 
very triteness of the suggestion may be in the way of an appreciation 
of its value ; but its repeated and long-continued disregard in all 
social states, not excepting those supposed to be under the reign of 
Christian sentiment, is the apology for its insertion here. Fully to 
comprehend human rights, their nature, number, and expediency of 
exercise, one must be thoroughly acquainted with certain ethical as 
w T ell as natural principles, which no religion, save that of which the 
Divine Master is the inspiration, has completely embodied and mag- 
nified. With a knowledge of these principles, the conclusion is un- 
answerable that a violation of rights is a violation both of nature and 
ethics, and so subversive of human welfare. 

Studying human conditions in the light of these principles, a 
thorough reformation of social and political ideas is imperative ; such 
a reformation as must result in the subordination of ideas hitherto 
held supreme. By the terms of nature, and equally by the authority 
of ethics, war is precluded from the ideal state. Mankind constitute 
a brotherhood, cemented together by the unity of their origin, and 
organized into societies for the conservation of justice, equality, and 
happiness. In violation of the ideal of universal peace, Plato, in his 



508 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ideal republic, provides for the military, assigning to the soldier a 
place only a little lower than that of the governor, and dignifying 
the profession of arms far above that of the tradesman or laborer. Pat- 
terned after a true ideal, no society will need the soldier, whose chief 
business is to enforce the wishes of his government, regardless of the 
ethical considerations involved. The ideal excludes the military, 
eliminating the spirit of conquest, oppression, and political prejudice 
from national policies. Under this teaching standing armies melt 
into fragments, or disappear altogether, as snow-flakes under the sun; 
swords become plowshares, spears are turned into pruning-hooks ; 
race oppressions and national vituperations cease ; and a millennial 
peace spreads its white mantle over the whole earth. Surely this end 
is not unworthy of the religion that proposes to secure it. 

Nature protests against the spirit of caste in society, but offers no 
remedy. The differences in men, arising from their creation, upon 
which ranks and gradations have been founded, we can not wholly 
ignore ; but we can avoid the extreme and fanatical conclusions, dis- 
rupting society, and breeding mischief and misery, of which these 
natural differences have been made the burden-bearers. The cure for 
the caste-spirit is, omitting the differences, to fix the eye on the re- 
semblances, or the common and equal rights of men, under nature 
and the true religious conception of man. Life is a common right ; 
liberty is inalienable and universal ; the end or purpose of life — self- 
development — ought to be sacred, and interference with it should not 
be tolerated. If one have the right to live at all, he has the right to 
live for the highest ends of life. Any thing that strikes at the end 
strikes at the beginning of life, the reason of being at all. Conced- 
ing the idea of equality, how it strikes, not only at certain social con- 
ditions, as caste, slavery, and communism, but more forcibly still at 
certain philosophical principles, the inculcation of which has resulted 
in the conditions which have proved to be the weaknesses of civ- 
ilized life. 

Caste is the curse of the Orient, the fruit of the old religions and 
philosophies that knew not the mind of God concerning the race, or 
the great doctrine of the unity of mankind. Slavery in the early days 
was not an artificial institution, but the logical result of such religions 
and philosophies. The liberty of man was submerged in the idea of 
the inequalities of men. The restoration of liberty belongs to the re- 
ligion that, looking deeper than differences in men, discerns equality 
and unity as the superior factors in the consideration of the interests 
of the human race. Under the domination of an ideal idea, caste and 
slavery must quietly or forcibly be ejected from the ideal state. 

In other directions the rights of man have been unjustly curtailed 



PROCLAMATIONS OF NATURE AND RELIGION 509 

on philosophical grounds, while nature and religion unite in a repu- 
diation of the justifying argument. The range of individual rights, 
as defined in the Gospel, is broad enough to include both sexes ; 
but no philosophy or religion has gone so far as to concede to woman 
an equal share in natural rights; hence she has suffered, and society 
has never risen to its proper height. By an evident providential ar- 
rangement, which is perplexing to the materialist, it so happens that 
in the matter of births of human beings the proportion of males to 
females is 106 to 100 ; that is, a slight majority of males preponderates, 
since they are more exposed to climate, hardship, and war, showing 
that the divine design is to preserve the sexes in equal numerical 
proportions. By no system of marriage — by no enforced violations 
of nature's suggested order — must this proportion be disturbed. Both 
polygamy and celibacy go down beneath the order of nature ; but of 
all religions Christianity alone appropriates nature's hint, or " Do- 
rically harmonizes" with nature's teaching, discerning that monogamy 
is the inexorable law of God. With Plato's community of women 
this idea comes in direct collision. Under the philosopher's perverted 
conception woman lost her marital right, and home its divine sacred- 
ness. Such is the relation of the family to government, individual char- 
acter, and social progress that, if it lose its solemnity, or compromise 
its unity, immorality will abound, the safeguards of public virtue will 
be reduced, and society will become a nest of iniquity. In the ideal 
state, Plato's community, the polygamy of Mohammedanism, and the 
celibacy of the Roman Catholic priesthood can have no existence, 
being repugnant to the law of monogamy, founded in the fact of the 
equal proportion of the sexes. 

Summarizing individual rights in the light of an ideal principle, or 
arranging them under the co-operating proclamations of nature and relig- 
ion, it is easy to see that ivar, caste, slavery, polygamy, and celibacy must 
be expelled from society, and peace, unity, equality, freedom, and monogamy 
must be everywhere installed. 

In an ideal society, the problem of education will have definite and 
satisfactory solution. The woful ignorance of man, not only of real 
being, but of phenomena, or the manifestations of being ; not only 
of things, but of forces likewise ; not only of effects, but of causes, — 
is at once acknowledged. He is steeped in ignorance, incessantly 
violating law, right, duty, and self-interest. He is blindfolded, yet 
walking toward the sun. He is the heir of darkness and all its 
fruits, of which crime and calamity are the most universal. He is 
the sport of laws he does not understand, the victim of penalties he 
can not foresee. He needs truths, knowledges, vastness of vision, 
magnificent illuminations, eternal revelations. Until every man's 



510 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

eyes are opened to the truth ; until all know universal law and its 
penalties ; until nature and the supernatural, being and non-being, 
are grasped by the intellective forces ; until the mind arrives at the 
summits of philosophical research and moral wisdom, — there will be 
room for the play of ignorance, which may prove to be the fly in the 
ointment, or the spark in the magazine. Danger lurks in ignorance. 
Plato is the advocate of education, as a moral restraint, the means 
of reformation, and the basis of a well-ordered society ; but his edu- 
cational system is not of public utility, for he confines it to the 
guardians of the state, and limits acquirements to gymnastics, music, 
the military art, and philosophy, a curriculum that a modern uni- 
versity would pronounce inadequate to self-culture and self-develop- 
ment. For artificers, agriculturists, and tradesmen, Plato provides no 
education at all, deeming it quite unnecessary to skill, efficiency, or 
success in their pursuits. Thus education, in his estimate, is for a 
class, and that the smallest, only! This is Platonism, which is the 
key to all philosophical systems of education, the chief objection to 
which is a limited curriculum, confined to a limited class. 

The opinion has gained currency that universal education is not 
desirable, since neither the industrial pursuits nor the commercial in- 
terests of society demand it. The error of the opinion lies in the 
estimate of education as a mere instrument in matters of acquisition 
or worldly pursuit, whereas education is self-development, having re- 
spect wholly to the internal life of man. As an instrument, it is 
useful ; as a development, it is essential. • The man requires educa- 
tion, whether his pursuit can be prosecuted with or without it. 
Co-education, compulsory education, and universal education, are the 
triple ideas that must enter into any great or effective system of educa- 
tion; for an ideal state is impossible in which ignorance and intelli- 
gence co-exist in about equal proportions, or in which the multitudes 
walk in darkness, while the guardians alone walk in the light. For 
fear of misguiding, it must be added that education alone is not a 
sufficient remedy for the afflictions of the Christian state, for it may 
obtain with a perversion of morals and spiritual blindness, and be in- 
operative as a regenerating force. Nana Sahib, an incarnation of 
cruelty, was broad-brained and a cultured gentleman. Voltaire was 
educated ; likewise, Gibbon ; but education saved neither from spir- 
itual imperfection. These admissions or hints are of force in showing 
that other agencies besides those named will be required for the fos- 
tering of the purposes and ends of the best society. 

The industrialism of society must have recognition and regulation, 
according to nature and the dictates of a Christian philanthropy. 
The majority of men are engaged in agricultural, commercial, and 



THE LOGIC OF SOCIAL INJUSTICE. 511 

mechanical pursuits, developing the physical resources of their coun- 
try, and making the blind forces and agencies of matter tributary to 
human happiness and destiny. By his industries, man is obeying the 
commandment to subdue the earth, and acquiring dominion over 
every created thing. 

Shall man's environment subdue him, or shall he subdue his en- 
vironment? Such a question he can not escape; its issue is in the 
line of personal supremacy or personal degradation, and, therefore, 
intensely religious. That this problem involves difficulty, no one 
acquainted with it will doubt. Dangers, prolific and threatening, 
attend the acquirement of personal authority, or the reign of mind 
over matter. What means shall be adopted to avert disaster or shock 
during the processes of development, is no small question. No sub- 
ject more profoundly stirs the masses than that of national industrial- 
ism, or the relation of labor to civilization, requiring genius, philo- 
sophical discernment, and statesmanship perfectly to settle it. For 
among the discontented masses of the nation is a volcanic spirit, 
whose mutterings of a cruel purpose are distinctly heard, and which, 
thoroughly aroused and in action, may engulf wide-spread interests, 
and even involve in peril the national life. 

In the settlement of a problem so far-reaching in its consequences, 
and in the adjustment of relations, hitherto strained, between capital 
and labor, there will be opportunity for the exercise of justice, 
patience, a spirit of philanthropy, and a regard for religion. In the 
Old World, the oppression of the laborer has been degrading in the 
extreme, the only escape from it being in emigration to free Amer- 
ica, where labor has dignity and remuneration. This is not the 
greatest evil of low wages — emigration — but it has engendered a dis- 
satisfaction with society, whose pillars rock with the commotion of a 
general indignation against further outrage and oppression. Com- 
munism, socialism, nihilism, a brood of evils, reduced from theoretical 
conceptions to practical experiments, are the logical reactions of an 
exacting age, and menace the age itself. Either the social structure, 
as constituted, or nihilism, is wrong ; the animating spirit of one or the 
other needs purification. In its present organized form, social struc- 
tures of the most liberal type are not altogether favorable to the 
laborer. Injustice, with seeming parade of justice ; lines of division 
between the upper and lower classes, so-called, becoming more dis- 
tinct ; hereditary titles and official honors confined to the patricians ; 
wages graduated according to the caprices of wealthy proprietors ; 
the mechanic deprived of social privileges; the hours of labor extend- 
ing into the night; Sunday desecrated by mercenary requirements — 
all these are indications of a perverted social order, and the causes of 



512 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

an impending conflict that may rend the social structure that tolerates 
divisions, oppressions, and violations of right. In America, socialism 
has been under restraint, manifesting itself only in occasional " strikes," 
haughty discussions, and proposed reckless legislation, which, however 
objectionable and un-American, are the deep foreshadowings of a 
chronic complaint with industrial regulations. 

It is not our province to propose, a cure for these evils, a matter that 
more properly belongs to the political economist ; but, recognizing the 
disorders of society, we shall be justified in appealing for relief. In 
this emergency, philosophy has nothing to offer, or what it offers is, 
as has been more than once proved, insufficient. It is settled that 
communism can not enter the ideal society, but how to keep it out is 
the question. Plato's teachings are communistic; John Stuart Mill is 
a conservative socialist ; Fourier is a most fanatical socialist ; but, 
from the refined and philosophic communism of Plato and Mill to the 
revolutionary socialism of Europe is but a single step. The theory 
of the one is the practice of the other ; the ideal of Plato is the real 
of Europe. In the construction of an ideal state, therefore, it is not 
clear that either ancient or modern philosophy can help us. Herbert 
Spencer's social system is an evolution, not yet evolved — a growth to- 
ward supposed ideals, but not the realization of them. But are there 
no industrial ideal principles that can at once be adopted? Must 
society tardily grow into true ideas of justice, benevolence, philan- 
thropy, and as tardily outgrow the tendencies to nihilism? Verily, 
the radical cure of these disorders is in the principles of the Christian 
religion, the adaptation and efficiency of which for the purposes re- 
quired will hereafter be portrayed at length. 

Next, it is incumbent on us to give place to the moralities, or a 
working and producing ethical system, in the ideal state. On wrong, 
injustice, and moral misrule, the State can not long exist. Between 
the public life and the ideal ethical order, there must be concord; 
the relation must be musical. In the people there must be a love of 
the right, so that wrong will create friction, disturbance, and con- 
vulsion. In such a society, resistance to wrong will not be theatrical 
or simulated, but intensely aggressive and victorious. The chief good 
will be sought in the direction of righteousness. Immorality, coarse 
or refined, is as destructive of the State as ignorance or communism, 
and to be extinguished quite as speedily. If education must be con- 
fined to the minority, morality must be universal ; the lowest classes 
must be as moral as the highest, or irreparable mischief is inevitable. 
To prevent an increase of criminals, and a new troop of dangers, a 
higher standard of moral life must be raised. In devising or seeking 
a system of morality, it is not so important that it be philosophically 



ALTRUISTIC ETHICS. 513 

perfect and adapted to master minds, as that it shall be universal in 
its application, restraining iniquity in whatever form it appears, and 
inculcating righteousness in all classes of society. Ethics for the 
multitude ; ethics for the elite. Philosophy devises ethics for the 
latter ; but a broader system must be reared, which shall be adapted 
to both, as, morally, there is no difference between them. 

In need of a broad and efficient system of morality, where shall it 
be found ? In need of ideal standards of right, who will proclaim 
them? Philosophical or naturalistic morality runs to low definitions 
of right, justice, and truth, and frames narrow-minded views of duty 
and human responsibilty. Zeno, more penetrating than his contem- 
poraries, declared that Tightness and wrongness inhere in actions; 
but so profound an idea did not prevail in the academies of his day. 
Epicurus determined the morality of human action by its power to 
produce happiness; and Aristotle suggested that virtue consists in 
the observance of the mean between extremes, which is the theory of 
temperance or moderation in life. No swinging to excesses, no fanat- 
icism, but a well-balanced purpose or action, avoiding excess on the 
one hand and deficiency on the other, is moral or virtuous, and entitled 
to reward. Generosity is neither extravagance nor parsimony, but 
the middle point between them. In ancient philosophical circles the 
Aristotelian definitions, succeeded by the Epicurean system, had for a 
long period full sway, and a molding effect on teaching and practice. 
For the wider circle of the multitude the metaphysics of ethics was 
not required ; but an incorporation of principles to which the common 
mind could respond was a necessity. 

Not less delusive and incapacitated are the modern philosophical 
suggestions touching the ethical problem. From his definition of jus- 
tice as a mere conformity to local legal ideas, James Mill rose to the 
conception of the essential element or secret bond of all moralities, 
seeing in them only a conformity to the idea of utility, or a serving 
of self-interest in the performance of the so-called duties of life. 
Hume's conception of morality entirely agrees with this of Mill. 
Utility is the ideal of life, the test of all virtues, the standard of all 
actions. Herbert Spencer's ideal morality is of a purely naturalistic, 
as opposed to a purely supernaturalistic, type, consisting of growths 
rather than revelations. It is scientific morality, as distinguished 
from spiritual or religious morality, realized as the issue of social col- 
lisions, compromises, and final co-operations. Altruism, the core of 
Hpencerian ethics, destroyed Rome, Egypt, Persia, and Greece ; and 
it is difficult to avoid believing that, if adopted, it will destroy mod- 
ern civilizations. Morality reduced to utility, or whose chief idea is 
centripetal, i. e., personal selfishness, must go outside of history and 

33 



514 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

human experience to justify itself to this age, for under the sway 
of such systems the old civilizations tottered to their ruin. In Chris- 
tianity alone will one find an ethical system that elevates while it 
restrains, and preserves while it prohibits. 

In this schedule of the necessities of the ideal state, no reference 
has as yet been made to the form of government, or the civil and 
political complexion which it must finally assume for the security of 
the ideal ends before it. Evidently, the form of government must be 
in harmony with the purposes to be accomplished by it. Legislation 
and politics must have reference to the conservation of individual 
rights, the extension of education, the regulation of the industrial in- 
terests, and the authority of ethics, overlooking which the government 
must fail of a vindication of its existence. 

What, then, shall be the form of government for the ideal society? 
Of existing or superseded forms of political authority, none is perfect, 
none ideal, if that be necessary. A tyranny is at once rejected, being 
incompatible with all the ends of government. Oligarchy, the gov- 
ernment of the rich, is the reign of a class who are oppressive in spite 
of a purpose to be considerate, and must, therefore, be rejected. The 
fate of the aristocracy, the government of the few, is the same. 
Monarchy, the most popular old-world form of political government, 
we can not eulogize as ideal, since it is proscriptive of the ruled, and 
tends to a too ambitious exaltation of the rulers. Virgil taught the 
Romans t6 salute Augustus as divine, an early illustration of the idea 
of the divine right of kings. If divine in person, they must have 
divine authority. From such an extreme a recoil was certain, and it 
has come, royalty occupying a much reduced position in the estima- 
tion of men, and no longer receiving celestial honors. Government 
is of God — governors are men. Plato stoutly opposes pure democracy, 
which is always in danger of anarchy. Historic governmental forms 
are not ideals. 

What then ? What is the beau ideal of the civil power ? Is there 
such a thing as ideal politics? If our ideal society is not to be a 
picture of the imagination, but a reality on the footstool, its principles 
must be moral, its virtues human, its methods available, its form tan- 
gible. Not an airy, sentimental, aristocratic form, weakened by 
Platonic effeminacies, but a republican, or representative form of 
government, cohering by the virtues of its citizens, and perpetuating 
itself in the world's life, as its greatest moving force, is that for which 
we now appeal. It is not a philosopher's government that is sug- 
gested ; nor is metaphysical statesmanship advocated ; nor can political 
sestheticism rule in this ideal. Face to face with the basal idea of 
the ideal, we submit the proposition that the Christian State is the ideal 



THE CHURCH SPIRIT FUNDAMENTAL. 515 

State; in other words, that essential Christianity is the elemental life 
of the ideal society. Going immediately below the surface, this 
means that religion shall be the principal exponent of the social order 
and the outward sign of its inward life. In PJato's republic religion 
is not an apparent feature, since not more than two or three religious 
allusions are made, and more to appease popular faith than from a 
recognition of its value. In no philosophical system for the improve- 
ment of society is religion, except in the broad sense of a morality, 
regarded as vital, or so much as important. In social structures, 
barren of religious essentials, the moralities and philanthropies occupy 
conspicuous places, but rather as instruments of comfort and progress 
than as ideal experiences and achievements. The difference between 
the philosopher's ideal of society, and that here formulated, is the 
difference between the presence and the absence of religion. 

The extent to which Christianity shall enter into the life of the 
State, and whether it shall be regnant, giving complexion to juris- 
prudence, education, manners, morals, industries, and dictating the 
tone of civilization, or become a silent but reflective influence, are 
fundamental considerations, the vital points of the subject itself. To 
make a general declaration of faith, or political policy, in answer to 
the above, we submit that Christianity will introduce to the notice of 
the State all the institutions, ideas, moral forces, and moral benefits 
embodied in the word Church — a word foreign to philosophical 
systems. In its final workings it will be evident that it will be aim- 
ing to convert the State into the Church and in a sense to convert 
the Church into the State ; that is to say, Christianity will Church the 
world. This is a definite purpose, requiring and providing all re- 
formatory and redemptive agencies, and laying foundations as strong 
as the everlasting hills for the future society of man. Christianity 
has a twofold object, as its permanent aim : 1. The inward, relating 
to the regeneration of man ; 2. The outward, expressing itself in an 
organized Church. With the second only have we now to do. The 
authority of Christianity, and how it shall be exercised, whether dis- 
tinct from State forms and State ethics, and, therefore, a rival or 
twin power, or in unison with them, forming an iron and clay com- 
bination, deserves careful consideration. It is the old question, never 
satisfactorily solved, of State Churchism, or a free and independent 
Church. Monarchies prefer Church establishments, and maintain 
them at vast expense ; but very much is lost to the Church itself by 
the secular association. In England the Church is more of a political 
institution than is consistent with its design, working out political 
rather than religious schemes, and enforcing religious teachings by 
machine methods, which are always inimical to spiritual elevation and 



516 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

intelligent living. The dissenting spirit is strong, making itself felt 
in the organization of independent religious societies, which for 
activity and efficiency have already eclipsed the moss-bound Church 
orders of the kingdom. What is true of England is also true of 
Germany, and will be true of Roman Catholic countries when inde- 
pendent action shall be tolerated. 

The evils of State Churchism are greatly to be deplored. What- 
ever the advantage to the State, the Church suffers inevitable loss in 
vigor, spirituality, and activity. The State secularizes the Church ; 
the Church fails to regenerate the State. Thus it was in the days of 
Constantine, when, notwithstanding the splendor of his reign and the 
apparent advance of Christianity, it lost in moral tone, and society 
became as a turbid pool. In the ideal State the Church must be free 
and so separate from the civil power that the functions of each may 
be performed without the interference of the other, both conserving 
by independent methods the common idea of unity, progress, and 
happiness. Shall there be two influences in power? Shall both 
Church and State rule ? Rule they can not if united — can they rule 
if separated? Each is an organism, blending in the pursuit of the 
public good, but working towards it by machinery of its own. 
Given a republican government and a free Church: the product is an 
ideal society. The double reign of Church and State is paralleled 
by the double rotation of the earth, the one around its own axis, 
the other around the sun. The magistrate is not the priest — the 
priest is not the magistrate. No monarchy, no theocracy, no State 
Churchism — a dual government, whose politics is ethically sound, 
whose religion is politically democratic ; this is the ideal State and 
none other. 

That Christianity is vital to the ideal society has been more than 
once intimated, and little needs to be added in proof of it. What- 
ever is vital to the State, Christianity promotes and preserves. What 
is the great fear of nations ? Internal decay, external opposition ; 
strife within, assault from without. The former is the greater peril. 
Niebuhr says, " No nation ever died except by suicide." Political 
intrigue, public corruption, the loss of individual virtue, the decline 
of the family institution, the love of vicious luxuries, and variation 
from righteousness have been more effectual in national overthrows 
than organized external war against a people. National immorality 
is the prelude of national extinction. The Grecian cities united were 
invincible ; divided, they were conquered. From internal decay and 
external assault; from national vices and foreign wars, Christianity 
will save the State. Were the world a Church, the sword would be 
a relic, for war is not a Church force, or a Church condition. Where 



ORGANIC EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 517 

the Church is, there is the holiness of peace, and the peace of holi- 
ness. To this ideal condition the world is slowly drifting ; nations 
even from the low level of economic reasons are considering the ex- 
pediency of abolishing standing armies and submitting international 
differences to arbitration. Both Kant and the elder Mill favored an 
international code for the guidance of international affairs, under the 
influence of which they anticipated the elimination of international 
evils ; but, like other philosophical schemes, the code was never 
adopted. Christianity is in force, working out its legitimate and 
beneficent suggestions in the world's advance toward peace. Saving 
the State from external or foreign assault, it saves it from internal 
gloom and decay by the repression of popular vice, and the intro- 
duction of virtue. In these respects Christianity is vital to the 
ideal State. 

In the very nature of the organization of society, the liberty of 
the individual, or the sovereignty of personality, is an essential of its 
growth and preservation. The freedom of vocation ; the sacred right 
of marriage ; the choice of religion ; the possession of property ; the 
exercise of suffrage ; the right to public office ; all these and more 
belong to free men. But the assertion of individual rights is incon- 
sistent with caste, slavery, despotism, polygamy, and the "inhuman- 
ities " of man. However, Christianity is the assertion of individualism ; 
one of its magical words is " brotherhood," as opposed to the world's 
word — " bondage." Christianity is emancipation, unity, freedom, 
development. Under it man is the heir 3 not the slave, of the race 
to which he belongs. 

In the matter of industrialism the necessity for harmony between 
capitalists and laborers is self-evident. Harmony or communism — one 
or the other. Christianity casts its vote in favor of harmony. Fa- 
voring justice, curbing the greed of men, instilling patience, invig- 
orating human sympathies, and sanctifying human toil, it prepares 
the way for reconciliation between classes, mutually jealous and hos- 
tile, undermining the communistic spirit by its sweet ministry of 
love. Divorce religion and labor, and the latter sinks into material- 
ism. Without religion, labor deals with matter as a thing; religion 
inspiring, it deals with matter as an expression of God's power and 
wisdom, and the laborer rises ever into thoughts of God. 

Practically, Christianity will have an influence in determining the re- 
wards of labor, and international policies respecting international trade. 
In the Christian state man's toil will have just remuneration, wages being 
assessed according to the principles of political economy, which consid- 
ers the welfare of the whole rather than the advantage of the few. Mo- 
nopolies will not flourish ; the poor will acquire property ; and life will be 



518 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

agreeable to all. Home trade, such as agriculture, mercantile business, 
and the manufacturing interests of communities, will be regulated by 
the moralities of the ordained religion of the state, which will, promote 
good will, the harmonious adjustment of conflicting enterprises, and an 
orderly progress in all departments of civil life. As to foreign trade, 
or the law governing exports and imports, a partisan spirit will not dic- 
tate free trade or protective tariffs, but the conflicting doctrines or poli- 
cies will be harmonized on the basis of a large philanthropy, which re- 
gards other peoples besides one's own, and the world as well as one's 
own section of it. Equalization of international rights touching trade, 
or philanthropy rather than a local patriotism, which sometimes de- 
generates into systematic selfishness, will have larger consideration in 
the future than it is possible to have now among partisans; and to 
that future we refer the whole question. 

That Christianity is the friend of education none will hesitate to 
admit, except those who confound the Roman Catholic religion with 
the divine system of the Master. Christian governments are favora- 
bly disposed to popular education, proving that Christianity is some- 
thing more than a religion, or that, as a religion, it stimulates to 
thought and intellectual achievement. This stimulation it effects by 
the force of its truths concerning God and man; by its eternal 
order of righteousness ; by its system of laws ; by its detail of du- 
ties ; by its visions of destiny. In Christianity itself, its revelations 
of being, cause, order, life, and ends, is the ground-work and inspira- 
tion of education. It makes the ideal man, without which the ideal 
state is impossible, for it is only an aggregation of ideal units, of 
ideal human beings. The fact, too, must not be obscured, that the 
ideal state does not produce the ideal man, but the ideal man pro- 
duces the ideal state. With him, the State is certain. The primary 
object of Christianity is not the production of Christian communities 
and nations, but Christian men and women, of whom Christian com- 
munities and nations may be organized. It deals with the individ- 
ual. It enjoins the moralities; it approves and fosters the philan- 
thropies ; it ordains religious regeneration, or religious character. 
This is the summit of idealistic manhood, reached through the divine 
stepping-stones of Christianity. The ideal man, sustaining a divine 
relation to the universe, becomes in society the center of the moralities, 
the philanthropies, and the spiritualities. He is grounded in God, and 
God in him. 

Naught but Christianity produces such. Produced, he makes the 
State, the community, the family, the Church. The ideal State con- 
cretes in ideal men made real by the Christian forces. Had J. S. 
Mill discerned the ideal in the real of the Christian religion he had 



IDEAL PURPOSE OF CHRISTIANITY. 519 

never despaired of the world, and never proposed a philosophical re- 
construction of it. 

In the presence of those who see the approaching day of the Chris- 
tian State, under whose sway moral, social, and political evils will 
retire, and a heavenly life of wisdom, justice, purity, and develop- 
ment prevail, pessimism dwindles into absurdity, materialistic theo- 
ries vanish like a nightmare, and Christianity arises as the force and 
inspiration of the actualized social ideal. Hasten, the new day! 
Welcome, the Christian State ! 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE PERFECTION OP WLA.1SL THE IDEAL OR CHRIS- 
TIANITY. 

IT is reported from Liberia that some of the natives are able with 
unaided eyes to behold the satellites of Jupiter, so marvelous is 
their power of vision. A vision equally acute is required to descry 
the distant or future man in his harmoniously developed character 
and life, as it shall appear under Christian rule and in complete 
subserviency to the will of God. As a human description of the 
future man as the result of the natural order of things, must par- 
take to some extent of conjecture, and be based upon inferences 
from empirical, historical, and philosophical studies, it is im- 
portant that the best helps, and even divine assistance, be invoked 
if the ideal man be truly prefigured. Looking upon him through 
the telescope of Christianity, and knowing that its revelations are 
accurate, and conclusions therefrom will be reliable, the task of de- 
scription will be simplified, and faith in the attainment of the ulti- 
mate purpose of Christianity will be strengthened. 

If Christianity has an ideal object of pursuit, or is controlled by 
a single supreme purpose, however manifold its incidental and col- 
lateral purposes may be, the inference is that, as indicated by its 
teachings and as already manifested in its history, its ideal purpose 
is the moral perfection of man. At the present moment it is suffi- 
cient to know that it has before it an ideal idea without knowing 
definitely the contents of that idea. Speaking philosophically, the 
teleology of Christianity is a theme worthy of the philosopher's con- 
sideration, for it is high enough for his vision, deep enough for his 
plumb-line, and moral enough for employment of his conscience and 
intuitions. Without risk we assume that it is inspired by the thought 



520 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

of achievement, that the motivity of religion is the realization of the 
ideal in human history, and that its inner life is in some way adapted 
to promote it. 

Possibly it is assuming too much when we affirm that its ideal 
purpose relates to man, but if it relate to other beings only it can not 
concern us. Man is interested in it only as it is interested in him. 
If it relate to others, rather than to himself, he may admire its 
beauty, and, discerning the hidden wisdom of its truths, be ready to 
eulogize it as a divine product; but he can not be interested in it. 
The fascination of Christianity arises from its relation to the race, its 
adaptation to human needs, its moral helpfidness in extremity, and its 
delivering power from the bondage of sin. That Christianity is a rev- 
elation of God none must deny ; but it must be something more. 
Primarily, its function is both to reveal God to man, and to conduct 
man to God; it is to create a Godward impulse in humanity, and 
leaven it with a heavenly life. Its work is for man and in man to the 
glory of God in Jesus Christ. Whatever other ends it promotes, or 
seeks to make known ; however much it contributes to the ascendency 
of other ideas and truths ; its chief end is the elevation, development, 
and perfection of man. 

This view magnifies man as the creature of God, and magnifies 
Christianity in proportion as its ideal end relates to man. If man is 
not included in the mission of Christianity, if his development is not 
the chief end of Christianity, Christianity is worthless. Perhaps this 
assumption of man's exalted position in the universe is owing to that 
vanity which humanity, even in its degradation, has always arrogated 
to itself, but which it will overcome as it is more enlightened. The 
evolutionist, renouncing the tendency to self-flattery, takes an entirely 
different view from the above, regarding man as very low in the scale 
of being, and destined to disappear. His is not a comforting revela- 
tion to the race. Quoting history, he informs us that the scientific 
thinker in the splendid days of Egyptian supremacy conceived that 
the earth is the center of the astronomic universe, and that all the 
planets revolve around it, and in a sense exist for it. Even Greece 
and Rome accepted the flattering astronomy ; but Copernicus extracted 
the romance from it, and pointed out that the earth is one of the small- 
est of orbs, and that it probably ministers to others, and will some 
day expire. Without emotion the evolutionist also informs us that 
the vanity which places man at the head of creation, eulogizing him 
as the first creature of the Almighty, destined to development and 
dominion, will be punctured by and by, and man will see himself 
as he is, an atom, a worm, a clod, with no destiny but decline, with 
no future but oblivion. Between the cold, forlorn, non-progressive 



MAN FIRST AND LAST, 521 

assumption of evolution, and the warm and inspiring teaching of 
Christianity, one must make choice. Is the thought of man's great- 
ness a vanity? Is the hope of progress an idle sentiment? Is man 
at the head or foot ? Christianity places him at the head ; evolution, at 
the foot 

Christianity is the only religion that foresees for man the devel- 
opment of his moral and intellectual possibilities, prescribing the 
method of such development, and providing the means by which 
it may finally be attained. It is the only religion that is committed 
to the doctrine of progress; that looks forward, not backward; that 
sings of millennial days, and plans for the triumph of order and the 
reign of wisdom. Contemplating the world in sin and darkness, it 
comes as the breaker of the yoke of sin, and as a light shining in 
darkness, a purpose no other religion ever espoused, a work no other 
ever performed. No one who reads the pages of the New Testament 
will deny that its first principle — regeneration — is a preparation for 
progress, and that its last eulogy is pronounced upon the man who 
has risen from the dust to the throne. The teleology of Christianity, 
therefore, relates to the development of man into an ideal character. 

Nor is this among the final recitations of Christianity, but really 
its first; or, representing it otherwise, the creation of man was the 
prophecy of his history, as it has unfolded into complex character- 
istics, and as it now points to an unending development and refine- 
ment of his possibilities. Studying the account in Genesis, it appears 
that man was last in the series of creative acts, and then suddenly it 
appears that he was first ; in other words, there are two accounts, ap- 
parently contradictory in their chronological relations, to be explained 
only on the ground of two authorships, or rejected entirely. It falls 
not within our province to attempt a reconciliation of these accounts, 
further than to state that, viewed from the standpoints from which 
they are given, they are the same in substance, and consistent as a 
revelation of a historic act. The difference in chronology makes not 
against the authenticity of the record, but, on the other hand, adds 
to its value. Considering the double account as written by one hand 
from opposite points of thought, we see that man was the supreme 
subject, whom the sacred writer desired to represent in more than one 
relation. As one may write the history of the United States from 
A. D. 1620 to 1886, or, beginning with 1886, write backward to 
1620, so the Mosaic account concerning man seems to be written in 
both orders; in the one, man is last, in the other he is first. 
Whether first or last, however, he is the pre-eminent character of 
creation, occupying the larger thought of the writer who records the 
creation. As last, man stands conspicuously enough in the series, 



522 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

waiting until the earth is ready for an inhabitant before he appears, 
and then he comes forth with a commission to subdue all things to 
himself. Last, he is greatest. As first, he precedes all things, as if 
independent of them, contented with the presence of God. It is not 
easy to determine whether as first or last he appears the greater, for 
he is great no difference when made, or how made. He either begins 
or ends the creative series ; introduces the panorama, or gives it the 
finishing beauty; and is as pre-eminent in the one case as in the 
other. According to the original account, therefore, man is related 
to the world's beginning, and the world's beginning in both instances 
is subordinated to his position and destiny. 

The assignment to such a position in the creative series implies 
not only the greatness of the creature, but also an equally conspicuous 
future in the development of the series. Representing him, not as 
an evolved being, but as created and divinely endowed, Christianity 
continually awakens in man the thought of his high origin, and the 
hope of a destiny that shall correspond to it. He was created in the 
divine image because a divine future lay before him. His creation 
is implicit with eternal development. Reasoning from analogy, this is 
patent from the divine order in the world's upbuilding, both of 
what we see and what we can not see. According to the theory of 
evolution, the different kingdoms of nature, ever subject to the laws 
of growth, exhibit a historic series from preliminary stages to com- 
plete or stationary forms, showing sometimes a leisurely development, 
and then a very rapid march to a given point, but in all cases observ- 
ing a specific and fixed order of history. From lichens and mosses 
the vegetable kingdom has evolved into flowers and forests, beautify- 
ing the rugged earth, and ministering to the aesthetic element in 
man. From fishes and reptiles the animal kingdom has developed 
into mammoths, useful quadrupeds, and all other individuals embraced 
in zoology. Now, the striking fact in these kingdoms is, not merely 
development after a fixed order, but development ivith reference to a 
final purpose; in other words, the motive of the development is the 
end or purpose foreseen from the beginning. At every stage of their 
development these kingdoms pointed futureward, not aimlessly, not 
ignorantly, but prophetically of a higher order of life or form. The 
lichen was the prophecy of the forest, and the reptile of the whole 
animal kingdom. These prophecies of nature's kingdoms related not 
so much to general development as to development of a particular 
kind, and for the realization of a particular end, incorporated with 
the world's forces, and regulating them from the beginning. 

But so manifest a historic development has its limits ; almost uni- 
versal, it does not apply to man ; and, since it does not apply to man, 



THE MASTERPIECE OF CHRISTIANITY. 523 

another development or order of life must be predicated to account for 
his place in the universe. According to the Biblical revelation, the 
work of creation ceased with man ; nor does it point to another and 
more highly organized being, as the result of a development of the 
original man. Man is the chief product of creative skill and wis- 
dom ; he will not become extinct by a natural order, and give place 
to a superior being. Creation not only stops with man, but centers in 
him its most delicate workmanship, and the most delightful proph- 
ecies of his greatness. He is the masterpiece of divine power and 
goodness. He is to develop, not out of himself or into another being, 
but into himself, as the rational exponent of God's idea of being. He 
is to develop, not into a grander being, inasmuch as he is gran- 
deur itself. 

In this presupposition we are but following the well-worn path of 
Bible teaching; but, well-worn as the idea is, it can not be too often 
reiterated that creation centers and exhausts itself in man. 

Besides, the path terminates in the highway of Christianity which 
confirms and completes the original idea of man's creation. It is the 
only religion that confirms the history of man's origin and will com- 
plete the prophecy of his destiny. Taking him up where creation 
leaves him Christianity, centering in him all its recuperative forces, 
undertakes to build him up into a concrete model of life. It has no 
other mission than to fulfill the original purposes of his creation. 
The masterpiece of creation, he will appear finally as the masterpiece 
of Christianity. As at the first creation's forces centered in him, 
so at the last the forces of Christianity center in him, undertak- 
ing to do for him what the former failed to do, that is, to furnish 
him with adequate resisting power against evil and to develop his 
spiritual nature into perfection. The thought is overwhelming that 
Christianity focuses its power in man for his development, for it 
means that all righteous self-effort will be supplemented by divine 
agency and that the race need not despair ; it means the employment 
of all the supernatural influences of Christianity in the great task of 
human development. Unaided in such a task, humanity must fail ; 
yea, it will perish ; aided by the divine forces, humanity will bloom 
with spiritual beauty and bear fruit unto holiness. Whatever Chris- 
tianity is, whatever it can do, the pledge is that humanity shall be 
the recipient of its favor, and rise to the height of its promises. Not 
man as the masterpiece of creation, but man under Christianity, more, 
Christianity in man, guided by it, developed by it, developed into it, 
this is the future man, this is the highest man. 

Under Christianity, as under no other system of religion, man is 
attaining to dominion of the earth and is bold enough to anticipate 



524 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

final and undisputed possession of its forces and facts. That physical 
dominion is one of the contemplated ends of his creation will be 
admitted at once by readers of Genesis, and by students of his 
adaptations, functions, and possibilities. The progress toward dominion 
it is confessed has been exceedingly slow, not at all in proportion to his 
capacity for dominion, nor sufficiently satisfying of his ambition or needs. 
For the most part, nature has had dominion over him, subjecting him 
to laws he did not understand, and playing with him, as a tempest 
with a yacht, or the wind with a fly. His intellectual dullness in 
the presence of nature was as apparent as his spiritual darkness in 
the presence of God. Until the dawn of Christianity, or until its 
influence began to be felt on the human intellect, nature was unsub- 
dued, inspiring man with dread which expressed itself in religious 
superstition ; the stars were worshiped ; fire was deified ; comets were 
the heralds of evil ; animals and reptiles received human homage ; 
and in ignorance of the reign of law man subscribed to fate and 
drifted into pessimistic darkness, or a heartless faith. Nature won 
the victory ; man was a slave. 

With the new torchlight in his hand, man has advanced in his 
conquest over nature, asserting as he goes his right to dominion, and 
making it good by a courage that must excite the admiration of the 
upper powers. He is ascertaining the limits of the empire of nature ; 
he is anxious to know what are the laws of this empire, and is per- 
sistent enough to demand a full revelation of them ; he is acquaint- 
ing himself with the forms and forces, functions and adaptations of 
nature ; he has reduced the forests and exterminated the wild beasts 
that inhabited them ; he has discovered the various poisons hidden in 
nature's garments and found also an antidote for them ; he is con- 
ducting himself as if he were master of the situation. 

This is one of his first duties arising out of his relation to the 
universe, namely, the subjugation of the earth and the acknowledg- 
ment of his authority in the empire of nature. By virtue of his 
creation this duty was imposed upon him, but without Christianity, 
as the stimulating and guiding force in conquest, he had failed. The 
idea of dominion is congenial to the new religion ; it fosters it in 
every way possible ; it dignifies man with a sense of authority ; it 
promises him royal prestige ; it exalts him to the throne. Hence, 
discoveries are not accidents, and inventions are not surprises; they 
are the natural results of that inspiration which religion induces and 
of that expectancy which it creates. The revelation of new facts, 
the discovery of new principles, and the employment of forces in 
new ways, are in perfect harmony with the designs, and in perfect 
fulfillment of the purposes of Christianity. 



DOMINION IMPLICIT WITH DEVELOPMENT. 525 

If it is imagined that the work of subjugation is external and 
without relation to man's personality, and can not contribute to its 
development, it is because the relation of the external to the internal, 
or, more 'concisely, the relation of the physical to the spiritual, is 
misunderstood. Once examined, it Will be seen that dominion is im- 
possible without the supremacy of the spiritual over the natural ; it 
implies such supremacy. What is dominion? Is it not the adjust- 
ment of man to his environment? Is it not the mastery of the 
material by the intellectual and spiritual ? Does not conquest signify 
the superiority of man to material forces and laws? Dominion and 
the want of it is the difference between man, as a barbarian, and 
man as an enlightened, civilized, Christianized being. The barbaric 
man is not a discoverer or inventor ; the developed man is both, and 
great in proportion as he is both. Over the former nature has 
dominion ; the latter has dominion over nature. Thus the idea of 
dominion is significant of the idea of development ; in fact, they are 
the same thing, or one without the other is a solecism. The duty of 
subjugation is enforced by the imperative condition that either man 
must regulate his environment, or it will regulate him ; he must sub- 
due the external or it will subdue him. The conflict is for single 
mastery and not for reciprocal dominion ; one can not share with the 
other the title to authority ; one must subdue the other. This is 
necessary to personal comfort and future destiny. Man's first work 
is along the physical line, external in character, but profoundly re- 
lated to self-development and salvation. 

Widening the view a little, the relation of the occupations of men to 
self-culture and the spiritual life is as vital as the relation of the internal 
and external conditions of the race. As pursuit is related to character, 
Christianity unobtrusively but effectually dictates to Christian na- 
tions those occupations which in their ultimate effects tend to moral 
elevation and the supremacy of man. To the superficial observer 
this may seem more poetic than real, and to the materialistic thinker 
it may seem grossly heterodox. Upon careful inspection we find that 
the motive of self-interest exercises a controlling influence in the 
selection of pursuit, but self-interest implies self-knowledge, and self- 
knowledge, broadened and refined by Christian truth, ordains just 
those pursuits which contribute most to human happiness and the gen- 
eral welfare of man. 

Studying the occupations of men, one will see that they are the 
product of human necessities, tastes, environments, and, therefore, 
the providential result of the general situation. Why agriculture, 
commerce, art, business, legislation, government, industrial occupation, 
and the miscellany of pursuits in civilized lands ? The explanation 



526 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

is at hand. As a barbarian, man's wants are few in number and 
simple in spirit ; he scarcely needs a house, clothing is a burden, fish, 
roots, nuts, and herbs constitute his food. Turn the barbarian into a 
civilized man and his wants immediately multiply ; he wants every 
thing ; he wants a house, a wardrobe, a pantry ; he wants a govern- 
ment and a Church; he wants law and education; he wants the 
universe and all that it contains. He is an organized want, incessant 
in his demands on all existence to minister to him. This change in 
aspiration, this march from simplicity to complexity, this demand for 
every thing, signifies that his barbarism has disappeared and a new 
life has taken possession of him. It is this new life, born of Chris- 
tian thought, that expresses itself in the multiplied pursuits of men, 
that runs out into agriculture, art, commerce, education, government, 
and religious activity. 

This, however, is not the whole truth respecting the subject. It 
can not have escaped observation that the majority of men's pursuits 
in their aggregate effects do tend to promote that self-development 
of man which Christianity sets forth as its supreme aim and ideal 
purpose. The moral content of human pursuit must not be ignored. 
Agriculture is a moral promoter of life, prosperity, and peace ; com- 
merce contributes something to international comity, and strengthens 
the doctrine of the unity of the race ; the manufacturer or inventor 
who aids in expelling labor from the earth is fulfilling the command 
to subdue nature and exercise authority over it; the teacher, the 
journalist, and the minister, by pointing out the avenues of truth, 
is turning human thought to its highest possibility ; and by all the 
pursuits of men the world is being lifted out of conservatism, misery, 
darkness, and delusion. 

Another glimpse reveals the fact that those occupations which 
have for their direct object the supremacy of man are in the ascend- 
ency, while those are in a decline that oppose the manifest destiny of 
human dominion. With the advance of the philanthropic spirit, 
the cultivation of the aesthetic faculty, and the priority of intellectual 
callings, the muscular or manual occupations have receded, or occupy 
the background of human progress. Barbaric pursuits and barbaric 
methods had a kind of justification in the periods of savage life or 
during the pastoral epochs ; but, as the earth is subdued, the race 
rises to philanthropic, intellectual, sesthetic, and religious ideals as the 
noblest objects of aspiration, and regulates its activities accordingly, 
From the savage state to the civilized condition the process is purely 
evolutional ; every step is an advance ; every age witnesses a ten- 
dency to an increase of human authority in the realm of nature ; and 
the day is not distant when man will be perfectly adjusted to his 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF GOVERNMENT. 527 

environment by the aid of the pursuits which a Christian civilization 
originates and promotes. Not by Christian institutions alone, but 
also by the sanctification of the secular pursuits of men, is the ideal 
purpose of Christianity being wrought out. The plow, the ship, the 
locomotive, the easel, the yard-stick, the scales, and the pen contrib- 
ute to this purpose as certainly as the Church, the school, and the 
home ; that is, the occupations of the race are related to the ideal end of 
the race as surely as the sacred agencies, divinely authorized to pro- 
mote it. 

Under Christianity political government is harmonizing with the 
ideal purpose, in that it is gradually assuming a form consistent with 
the largest liberty of the individual, and is prompting by its conces- 
sions and auxiliaries to the largest development. Where it obtains, or 
has any reigning or assimilative power the tendency is toward a dem- 
ocratic form of government, which is the ideal conception of govern- 
ment, as revealed in the Scriptures ; and so permeating is its influence 
that it is felt in lands where neither priesthoods nor rulers are dis- 
posed to recognize it. Whatever the uses of other forms of govern- 
ment, and however necessary they may have been in the early history 
of the race, the time has come when the personality of man requires 
for its self-assertion just that liberty which the republican type of 
government insures. While under any government genius may thrive, 
and the scholar secure honorable recognition, under many govern- 
ments the masses are crushed, and rise only with an increase of lib- 
erty. So imperative is the government of liberty that without it 
progress is slow and degradation is sure. Despotisms, barbaric laws, 
legal cruelties and oppressions, have characterized the exercise of 
civil authority from the earliest ages ; and, justified as they may have 
been by reason of the general ignorance, they did not promote cul- 
ture or develop character. Better forms were, therefore, required. 
To overthrow the old forms, however, was no easy task, but it was 
finally accomplished by the agencies or suggestions of Christianity. 
As Christianity is received the impulse to popular or representative 
government, or the breaking away from the forms of tyranny, be- 
comes intense and grows until it secures its end in democratic gov- 
ernment. The political tendency, apparently at times to disorgani- 
zation, nihilism, anarchy, is really toward personality, individualism, 
or the assertion of human rights. Individualism can not have the 
fullest play in governments, royal or despotic, as witness in Persia 
and Spain, but flourishes best in those civil conditions which deny 
to no man any right that belongs to another. This is a hard lesson 
for rulers to learn, but the people are learning it through the im- 
pregnating political enthusiasm of religion. As it prevails, caste and 



528 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

slavery, long the structural elements of society, disappear, and free- 
dom with aspiration rules the heart of man. 

It is not claimed that Christianity definitely points out the repub- 
lican form of government as the ideal to which society in its civil 
constitution should conform; but it inculcates such political princi- 
ples and favors such liberties, privileges, and rights, that such a form 
of government is a condition of their enjoyment; and by this indirect 
method such a form of government appears to have divine sanction, 
and to be preferred to all others. 

It must not be forgotten that Christianity is the proposed religion 
of all races ; that it is not the religion of a single nation ; but that 
it has in view, without respect of persons, the elevation of all men 
and the conversion of all nations, going farther in this particular 
than any other religion or any other project devised by men. It has 
but one purpose, which includes all races and nationalities. That 
purpose is to make men free, politically, intellectually, spiritually; 
to develop the personality of every man ; to insure to every man the 
fulfillment of his greatest possibilities. To be in harmony with such 
a purpose, political government must be democratic in spirit, guar- 
anteeing the same inalienable rights to all its subjects, and fostering 
the noblest aspirations of the national life. 

As Christianity spreads, taking root in the governmental idea, it 
will transform it, and the government will become more humane and 
liberal, and less cruel and extortionate ; and the individualism of man, 
eccentric or orde»ly, regular or irregular, will have free course and be 
glorified. This expansion of individual rights ; this guarantee of 
personality; this privilege of personal development, Christianity en- 
joins, and is enforcing upon the attention of rulers and people. This 
means progress, and progress means perfection. 

The latitude of our vision extends over the relation of Christianity 
to social customs, and social and moral institutions. Do these to any 
degree feel the impression of Christianity? And to what extent 
are they involved in the execution of its ideal program ? Without 
question, the social life of man in civilized lands is under the author- 
ity of religion, and is in a large degree molded by it. To be sure, 
acknowledgment of such influence, owing to human pride, may be 
reluctantly made ; but, acknowledged or not, it is evident that cus- 
toms, manners, institutions, neither distinctively religious nor political, 
have been under the guardianship of religious teaching, the results 
being seen in a healthy, moral tone in society and popular approval 
of refined sentiment and elegant conduct. Coarse, brutal manners, 
retire in the presence of the Christian spirit. Gladiatorial sports 
ceased at the command of Christianity. If bull-fighting is a pastime 



P URIFICA TION OF LANG UA QE. 529 

in Spain, to which the multitudes turn with delight, it is because 
Christianity has not taken root in public thought and does not sit 
on the throne. Cruel amusements, whether they involve men or 
beasts, religion condemns and will destroy. As for institutions, 
slavery went down beneath the righteousness of God; feudalism was 
consumed in the blaze of a quickened public judgment ; and invidious 
social systems expire in the light of the truth that the Lord is the 
Maker of all men. 

Again : Under Christianity the languages of men are undergoing 
such transformations, .and are so rapidly approaching unity, that be- 
lief in a common elevation of the race is no longer chimerical, and 
the expectation of a universal tongue no longer an idle dream. The 
refinement of language, the multiplication of words, and the har- 
mony of thought with the ideal purpose of religion, constitute signs 
of progress entirely due to Christian influence. Before any signal ad- 
vance in these matters was observable human thought was impreg- 
nated with pagan ideas, and human speech was reduced to an 
exponent of the lower nature of man. We do not fail to remember 
that the Greek language in the days of Pericles was strong and 
bountiful, but the paganism of the age was the fountain that cor- 
rupted it, and unfitted it for future civilizations. Even current 
tongues, under Christian thought, are not free from coarseness, blas- 
phemy, and provincialism, and modern literature itself can not claim 
to have reached perfection ; but modern language is an advanced 
language. It is the representative of modern thought, which in its 
spirit is Christian and in its purpose progressive. As pagan thought 
has been superseded by Christian thought, so pagan words, phrases, 
and sentences have been superseded by Christian words, phrases, and 
sentences. Kefinement in morals and manners has been followed by 
refinement in speech, intercourse, and conduct. The language of the 
street is being exchanged for the language of the home and the 
Church. Language now is the exponent of the higher nature of 
man, as before the reign of Christianity it was the exponent of the 
lower nature of man. 

Hence, religious words have multiplied, and languages are taking 
a religious cast. Few there are that do not abound with words re- 
lating to the Deity, the soul, worship, and eternity. This is eleva- 
tion ; this is sanctification. 

It is a remarkable sign of the times and a proof of the pervasive 
influence of Christianity that there is a belief in the final univers- 
ality of one language in the world ; that gradually the many dialects 
will subside or coalesce with one of the prominent languages ; and at 
last all nations will speak one tongue. This is not an unreasonable 

34 



530 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

hope, nor are the probabilities against it, for all the languages are 
one ; that is, they are branches of one trunk, having similar roots and 
pervaded by a similar life. The kinship is unmistakable, and unity 
is possible. This hope is like to other ideas that float in thinking 
circles, such as the unity of the race, the unity of the universe, the 
unity of history, and the unity of God, being founded on a similar 
basis, and quite as likely to become a practical realization. Under- 
lying all history, all thought, is the idea of unity, in accordance with 
which is the expectation of one language. But unity of language 
signifies a common elevation and the cementing of the nations in a 
great brotherhood, by whose aggregated enthusiasm and in the light 
of the great Gospel purpose they will together march on to the 
higher development prefigured in Christianity. 

The possibilities of man under Christianity may be discovered 
from still another standpoint. The scientific spirit of man is the 
prophecy of a new development of his intellectual nature to be 
achieved through the agency of religious influence. The direct bear- 
ing of science on the future man and the preparation it affords for 
the fulfillment of his great ends are of more consequence in this 
study than any thing that has hitherto received our attention, for, in 
a philosophical sense, it relates to the reign of mind in human affairs, 
which supersedes in importance the reign of man in nature. . The 
latter is an external reign ; the former, an internal reign. The one 
signifies dominion of the world ; the other, self -dominion. Subduing 
his environment, and regulating his occupations by, and conforming 
his political governments to, the Gospel ideal, the question remains, 
what will he make of himself? External dominion is one thing; in- 
ternal development another. Christianity promises both, insures both. 

Through the stimulating energy of religious truth the scientific 
spirit in man has been wonderfully quickened in modern days, so 
much so that it has taken the reins in its own hands and is driv- 
ing at a furious rate, exciting not a little alarm lest disaster happen 
to the very interests it would conserve. We say, let it go, or as 
Paul said of the ship in the storm, we let her drive. Scientific 
enthusiasm is not prejudicial to the best results in the Christian 
sphere. Spiritual truth supported by natural evidences is just as 
strong as if supported by spiritual evidences. Natural evidence and 
spiritual evidence must at last coincide in the defense of the highest 
truth. It is because scientific truth is in perfect harmony with 
spiritual truth that scientific evidences are as interesting as spiritual 
evidences, and no danger is possible to either, since both are one. 

In these modern times the scientific spirit is as evidently under 
the administration of Christianity as are the pursuits, governments, 



SPIRITUALIZATION OF THE SECULAR LIFE. 531 

arts, and institutions of men, resulting in the pronounced activity of 
the investigator, and in the accumulated facts and principles of the 
scientific student. One might not think so as, looking over the field, 
he discovers materialism, pessimism, and agnosticism, in apparent 
possession of scientific thought and arrayed against the very religion 
by virtue of which their existence is possible. All these antagonistic 
elements were anticipated as belonging to the evolutionary stages of 
scientific development ; but in process of growth these excrescences 
will slough off, and science stand as redeemed thought allied to the 
divine. In like manner the occupations of men formerly included 
piracy, counterfeiting, gambling, and other pursuits not legitimate, 
but Christianity is trimming human pursuit of its illegitimacy, and 
preserving only those occupations which are right in themselves. 
Political governments likewise at one time were despotic and inhuman, 
but Christianity is modifying and refining them. Similarly, science 
loaded down with skepticism and agnosticism, Christianity will purify 
and harmonize its greatest truths with the truths of religion. 

Philosophy, seeing the inner content of truth, and anxious to find 
out the basis of things, began with a theologic inquiry, but its 
answers, always barren of a divine element, fell to the ground, and 
yet they were valuable in suggesting the necessity of a theistic creed 
as the solution of all mystery and the condition of all progress. 
Science did not rise so high, did not see so far. She dug in the dirt 
and found diamonds, but could not properly estimate them. Discov- 
ering facts, she could not explain them. This is the limitation of 
the scientific spirit as the theologic inquiry is the limitation of the 
philosophic spirit within which the human mind may find sufficient 
exercise for its development. Just here man needs development. 

Under scientific influence and with philosophic problems to solve, 
the mind must enlarge, both in capacity and achievement ; and as it 
enlarges it must become conscious of the still higher destiny that is 
possible. Notwithstanding the superficial antagonism of the scientific 
spirit to religious truth, Christianity has appropriated it as an instru- 
ment of man's development, seeing that culture is a part of the 
property of the future man. Man's expansion into a cultured and 
sanctified consciousness is the primary object, the ideal purpose of 
Christianity, for the realization of which it subsidizes every thing. 

Such being the ideal end, it justifies the use and sanctification of 
every thing, occupations, governments, arts, institutions, sciences, and 
philosophies, that it may the sooner be accomplished. Some of these 
auxiliaries are not religious; they seem secular, physical, and incapa- 
ble of producing religious results or contributing to the religious 
ideal. But the spiritualization of the secular life of man, and the 



532 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

turning of the natural to spiritual account, is one of the secret 
virtues of Christianity and one of its methods for the success of its 
projects. As Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a colt, causing the 
earthly to carry the heavenly, so he lays upon the material the 
burden of the spiritual, or appropriates the earthly, the~physical, the 
secular for spiritual uses and spiritual ends. 

In view of its resources and adaptations, it is proposed as a funda- 
mental thought that Christianity has in contemplation the moral perfection 
of man, the security of which is guaranteed by the provisions of the 
Gospel itself. As it is the only religion whose ideal purpose relates 
to man's highest development, so is it the only religion that provides 
for the realization of the purpose. With any other religion such a 
purpose would appear sentimental, dreamy, an idle hope, since ade- 
quate power for its execution would be wanting ; with Christianity 
the purpose is the measure of the power, and the power the index to 
the purpose. By that general rule which limits results to aims, all 
religions may be judged ; and Christianity stands or falls by it also. 
The results of a religion never exceed its purposes. 

Inasmuch as philosophy never contemplated universality, it never 
provided for it, and never secured it. Brahminism, never dreaming 
of itself as a world-wide religion, spread but little beyond its birth- 
place. The internal thought of pagan religions has been that- they 
were national, not international or cosmic religions ; hence, they were 
satisfied with national recognition, aud did not seek international do- 
minion. On the other hand, Christianity is gifted with the universal 
impulse, and aspires to cosmic honors; it is not the religion for one 
people only, but for all ; it knows no national boundaries, no race 
peculiarities, no climatic influences; it is world-wide in its aims, and 
universal in its adaptations. It reduces its manifold purposes to the 
central or ideal purpose of perfecting every man in Jesus Christ, and 
proposes to produce a race which shall be the exponent of the divine 
idea in its creation. This is its aim, and, as we study its agencies, 
mark its historic steps, pry into its adaptations and mysterious power, 
we see that it is practically succeeding, and that it must fully succeed. 
Its purpose is not Utopian, only as the Gospel itself is Utopian in con- 
tent, promise, and potency. 

Look at the Church as the divinely ordained agency of man's 
spiritual development. Of all the institutions that have appeared as 
the product of religion, or as sanctified by it to the welfare of man, 
the Church deserves the most grateful recognition, and its work the 
highest reward. Whatever criticism it deserves on account of its 
imperfection, it is animated by no other purpose than that which 
constitutes the ideal aim of Christianity; it is one with the Gospel 



THE GROUND OF THE CHURCH. 533 

purpose. In the lower sense, Christianity is a leavener of human so- 
ciety, stimulating man's impulse to dominion, directing and sanctify- 
ing his occupations, inspiriting and reforming his governments, 
penetrating and refining social customs and manners; but, in the 
higher sense, it concretes itself in a visible, organized institution, 
having as its sole purpose the turning of the eye of the world to its 
appointed destiny of moral greatness. Christianity has been creeping 
around and getting into every thing, whether men would or would 
not have it ; but now it comes forth as an organized movement in the 
Church, announcing definitely its broad purpose, and striving delib- 
erately, being conscious of its power, for its completion in the world's 
redemption. 

The word "Church," so familiar to all ears, implies more than an 
assembly of people ; it implies a congregation of ideas and agencies in 
mutual fellowship, and co-operating for a single result. Among its 
ideas are those of God, man's relation to God, man's relation to man, 
man's responsibility and immortality, from which grow the great sys- 
tems of duty, morality, and religion. The ground-plan of the Church, 
its impulsive spirit, its instrumental ideas, are just such as must 
promote the purpose which Christianity has in view. For the diffus- 
ion of truth and the enlightenment of men in their highest interests, 
the agencies employed are entirely adequate and in harmony with the 
end. In proof, we point to the living ministry, who cease not to 
proclaim the existence of God, the methods of the divine administra- 
tion, the moral character and responsibility of man, and the necessity 
of regeneration and holiness ; who declare the will of the Most High, 
and the method by which "reconciliation" with God has been effected ; 
who emphasize the conditions and reveal the sources of developed, 
purified character; whose vision is bounded only by eternity, and 
whose prophecies are only those of God. The Church insists that it 
is a divine institution, with a ministry to declare its relation to man's 
development. Its holy sacraments ; its Sabbath days ; its sanctuaries 
of worship ; its benevolent societies ; its Sunday-schools, prove that 
in many ways the Church has entered upon its specific work of en- 
lightening and perfecting man. 

Passing from the institutions and external agencies of Christianity 
to Christianity itself, it is evident that, great as is the task imposed 
upon it, its resources, its spirit, and its achievements furnish the 
guarantee of its future success. In the carrying out of its program 
it is not defective, or the mere echo of an ideal it can not reduce to 
practice. 

By its own terms Christianity is the life of man, the inherent 
force of character. Speaking of Christ, John says, "In him was 



534 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

life;" and the Master says, "I am come that they might have life, 
and that they might have it more abundantly." Life ! It is inspira- 
tion; it is growth; it is development. To have life "more abun- 
dantly " must signify more life, greater enlargement, deeper experience, 
an ever-widening consciousness of God. More life is the promise of 
the Gospel ; more life is the cry of the soul ; it means spiritual eleva- 
tion, the opening of the spiritual faculties, the refinement of the 
spiritual tastes, the mutual indwelling of God and man. This whole 
idea of life is the product of Christianity, and its abundance is pro- 
phetic of new, better, and approximately perfect conditions for man 
in this world. Life is opposed to stagnation, inactivity, indifference, 
darkness, death. It has in it the possibility of infinite degrees of 
moral excellence. It opens the door to the eternal ages. It links 
thought to eternal truth. If the life promised by Christ is eternal, 
then the soul receiving it obtains an eternal impulse, a divine prefer- 
ence, a longing for all that is divine and eternal. He that receives 
Christianity receives a life-giving principle, and he that receives the 
life itself in its abundance may calculate upon never reaching the limits 
of growth, or exhausting the possibilities of grace. 

The ultimate product of Christianity is the Christian, a new man, 
with new functions, new visions of life, new views of himself, and an 
increase of knowledge respecting God. Out of the old, sluggish life 
of the world, which, reaching a certain low height, falls back into 
routine and insipidity, the new rises in spiritual beauty and knows 
no end but that of God. Agesidamus, a Pythagorean philosopher, 
taught that the perfect man is a " self-sufficient man," but he meant 
an intellectual sufficiency. The "perfect man" of the Gospels is 
"self-sufficient;" sufficient because God dwells in him, because he is 
like God. He is fully equipped with the divine resources ; he is not 
wanting in any good thing ; he is full, complete. Such a man Chris- 
tianity is adapted to produce; it does produce the self sufficient man. 

How true it is that "it doth not yet appear what we shall be!" 
As the barbarian has no pre-supposition of a civilized life; as the in- 
fant can not comprehend manhood; so man himself, civilized, Chris- 
tianized, can not foresee his greatest possibility or his highest grandeur 
in Jesus Christ. Accepting Christianity, which, gratifying some as- 
pirations awakens others, he finds himself silently unfolding, growing 
larger, seeing farther, until he catches glimpses of heights invisible 
from the fogs below. He rushes on, leaping over the mountains, 
rising toward the stars, gladdened in his journey by the music of 
another world, but is not satisfied until he has arrived at its open 
gates, whose keepers welcome him with the refrain, "Man, thou art 
immortal !" 



THE SUPREME TEST OF RELIGIONS. 535 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE FRUITS OK CHRISTIANITY. 

GROTIUS affirms that " the Christian religion . . . is so far 
from doing any thing destructive to human society, that, in every 
particular, it tends to the advantage of it." The value of Christianity 
is on exhibition in its benefits to human society. 

The test of all inventions, discoveries, institutions, systems, civ- 
ilizations, and religions, is their adaptation to human conditions, their 
ability to meet human necessities, their tendency to promote human 
happiness, and the security they give for the stability of promised 
results. 

Truth itself can be distinguished from the false, and safe-guarded 
in its conflicts with error, by appealing to the time-test, by quoting 
its effects, by rehearsing its history. History is the supreme test of 
all things. In another form the divine Teacher announced the same 
principle when he said, " By their fruits ye shall know them." Un- 
der the operation of this rule the worth of all philosophies, all po- 
litical economies, all constitutional governments, and all religions, 
may be fairly determined. 

It may be insisted that many of the principles of the religions that 
perished, or are in process of extinction, are fundamentally right, but 
the answer is that what is fundamentally right is productive of 
good, is a helpful influence to those who accept it. To be sure, 
the law of gravitation has sometimes resulted in disaster, as notably 
in the Tay bridge calamity, and the law of combustion has sometimes 
resulted in injury, as when it laid Chicago in ashes; nevertheless 
the laws are holy and good ; it was a violation of these laws that 
resulted in evil. These different systems of religion and politics have 
been productive of evil, not because their teachings were violated, 
but because they were observed, showing that they were funda- 
mentally wrong. 

And this is the trying test of religion; that is, the effect of its 
teachings when observed. Judaism itself, feeling the touch of this 
imperious test, surrendered on the ground of its inadequacy to con- 
serve the welfare of the people. The law of Judaism received the 
encomium of Paul, but he reminded the fathers that it " made 
nothing perfect," and so did not accomplish what it undertook and 
what was necessary to man's spiritual growth and culture. Chris- 



536 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

tianity, essaying the unfinished task of Judaism, and assuming all the 
prerogatives of a complete and competent religion, must submit to 
the same vital test, the rule of advantage to, or effect upon, human so- 
ciety. Admitting that at times and in places the results of its in- 
fluence have not been satisfactory, it can be shown that superstition, 
fanaticism, and common ignorance jointly interfered with its designs 
and methods, and are responsible for any apparent miscarriage of the 
new religion in its relations to society. Such compromises or fail- 
ures must be separated from the legitimate and orderly fruits of 
Christianity. 

In both the Old and New Testaments the Christian religion is fre- 
quently represented under the similitude of a tree, as having been 
planted, as being guarded and cultivated by a husbandman, as bud- 
ding, growing, and finally bearing fruit ; in short, as passing through 
the different stages of growth from the seed to the great fruit-bearing 
tree. In Eden it is the "tree of life." Conceiving of it in this as- 
spect, the great Teacher compares it to the mustard-seed, which, 
though the smallest of seeds, germinates and becomes one of the 
greatest of trees. John saw it in bloom in his old days, and de- 
scribed it as bearing twelve manner of fruits, and its leaves were for 
the healing of the nations. Christianity a tree ! Shall we say a new 
tree, the sequoia of theology? 

In the days of the Judean kings the religion of Moses was in the 
ascendency, but in the days of the prophets it was without vigor, it 
had lost its luster; the old tree that had borne fruit for Abraham, 
Samuel, and David began to decay; its leaves withered and fell to 
the ground ; the trunk was knotty and worm-eaten ; time had girded 
it with a cut that extinguished its life; and the venerable form, with 
roots broken, fell under the blast of a hurricane from the upper 
world, and gave place to another. Judaism, rotten, infirm, pauper- 
ized to the last degree, fell with resounding echoes into the arms of 
a providential fate that crushed it. This is simple history. 

Jesus now appears planting a new tree in the old soil, grafting 
upon it all the divine elements of Judaism, and imparting to it such 
additional life-forces as have constituted it the imperishable religion 
of humanity. In careless speech it is sometimes said that Christian- 
ity is the off-shoot of Judaism, a position assumed by Prof. Lindsey 
in the Encyclopedia Britannica, but without warrant either in history or 
logic. Christianity was not derived in part or in whole from the pre- 
ceding religion ; it was adumbrated by the types or ritualism of the 
once famous faith, but is indebted to it for not one of its distinguish- 
ing truths. The passage of the old to the new was the transforma- 
tion of certain eternal truths, common to all religions, or at least 



TR UTH SELF-DEPENDENT. 537 

identical with the religious idea, into Christian forms, or the realities 
of a permanent religion. Holding that incarnation belongs spe- 
cifically to the one and not to the other, and that the Messianic 
content of the one is absent from the other, Christianity can 
not be accepted as an evolution of a former religion, or the develop- 
ment of a pre-existent truth. The student of the two religions, the 
old and the new, the extinct and the living, will discover the re- 
mains of the one in the other, but as the traveler discovers frag- 
ments of the temple of Ephesus in the Mosque of St. Sophia. Build- 
ing material abounds in all religions, but the temple of Christianity 
is not a reconstructed edifice, but original throughout in plan, pur- 
pose, and achievement. What it has accomplished through the 
natural force of its truths, by virtue of its inherent tendencies to 
benevolent expansion, and because of its perfect sympathy with the 
highest human aspirations, must indicate somewhat its character, re- 
sources, and possibilities. We shall consider Christianity in two 
relations only, the budding period of its history and the fruit-bearing 
period, or its positive effects in human society. 

The budding period was the period of its beginning, embracing 
such truths as were announced by the Master, together with the 
apostolic development they received, and such other truths as logic- 
ally issued from such development. Embryonic truth may seem to 
differ from the same truth when developed as a man seems to differ 
from a child ; but the outline is the same, and the substance differs 
only in degree. Incarnation, as an embryonic truth, was too mys- 
terious to be understood, and was, therefore, rejected ; but, as a 
developed truth, it is readily received ; its relation to religion is one 
of indisputable necessity; its value determines the value of religion. 
Atonement suffered in its embryonic form, but, developed as a vital 
fact, it can not be abjured any more than religion itself. The resur- 
rection idea ran the same gauntlet with the same result. With un- 
developed truths in their hands the apostles started forth to conquer 
the world, or rather to enlighten it in those things concerning which 
there was more or less ignorance. Ignorant themselves of the full- 
ness of these truths, they must have proclaimed them imperfectly ; 
but, assisted by the Holy Ghost, they delivered them with power, and 
success followed. Embryonic truth has power; any truth, or any 
form of truth, is powerful; but developed truth needs less the ex- 
ternal aid of the miraculous than the other. Hence, at a later period, 
truth depended more upon itself, drew upon its own contents, and was 
inspired by its own power, dispensing with miraculous supports and 
credentials from heaven. A religion that thrives by its inherent en- 
ergy, calling upon itself to enlighten and move the world, is in 



538 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

advance of that religion that trusts more to external, artificial, or 
miraculous aids in its defense or for its propagation. 

Without casting any suspicion on the origin of the Christian 
faith, or detracting in the least from the excellences of the early- 
teachers, it may be stated that the apostolic period was the embry- 
onic period of religion, requiring miraculous aid, and depending for 
success upon divine interpositions, such as no subsequent age has 
called for or desired. The most intimate friends of Jesus misunder- 
stood his teachings ; they were slow in apprehending spiritual truth ; 
and without special divine assistance they had broken down in the 
beginning of their efforts to indoctrinate the nations. Peter succeeded 
on Pentecost because the Holy Ghost managed him and even 
directed his utterance. The sermon was not Peter's, but the Holy 
Ghost's. Under the supernatural developments of John and Paul, 
especially the latter, Christianity began to take doctrinal shape ; but 
in the early stages it was a chaotic mass of truths — truth in the ore. 
Without form, it was not without power, but its greatest power appeared 
when it was reduced to system, and exerted itself through divinely 
ordered forms, and by the ministry of its own spirit. It is only as 
the crudities of apostolic teaching are reduced to, and organized into, 
a systematic whole that Christianity appears in its best light. While 
it is not the result of evolution from pre-existent religions, it is a self- 
evolution from apostolic stages to final truth in stable forms. For 
example, the Trinity, hinted at by the Savior and grasped at last by 
Paul, was left in a chaotic state by the apostles ; and but for the re- 
sultant Church which expanded the doctrine into a rational concep- 
tion, it had remained rather a grotesque or mythological picture than 
a stupendous revelation of the divine character. The doctrine of jus- 
tification by faith, unfolded by Paul, did not bloom in all its beauty 
until Luther shouted it as the basis of the Reformation. The free- 
dom of man, an apostolic truth, was smothered in its unfolding by 
the more commanding fact of the sovereignty of God, and it never 
had the fullest theological defense until Arminius raised it as one of 
the pillars of the temple of truth. The double thought of eternal 
retribution for sin, or the existence and perpetuity of hell, and of 
eternal glory and reward for virtue and godliness, or the perpetual 
duration of the heavenly life, was announced by the apostles, but for 
expansion, and for full understanding and discovery of the hidden 
contents of so wonderful a truth, we owe much to subsequent scien- 
tific and religious inquiry. 

The apostles, as taught by the Master, foreshadowed a complete 
religion and delivered all necessary spiritual truths to mankind ; but 
many truths they gave in embryonic form. From them the world 



SUBORDINATE FORCES IN CIVILIZATION. 539 

has received a budded Christianity — a religion whose contents are all- 
sufficient, but whose development is even yet in its preliminary 
stages. Hence, not in the apostolic era, nor even in the first three 
centuries when its spread was violently rapid, and when the heroism 
of its defenders was never grander, will one find Christianity exerting 
its most beneficent influence, or displaying all its possible potencies. 
Courage, martyrdom, joyous experiences, enthusiastic projects, we 
certainly shall find ; but for the undermining power of Christianity, 
for its inspiration of the intellect, for its wide-spread and deep-rooted 
effect on civil government, for its purification of literature, its trans- 
formation of civilization, and the elevation of domestic life and social 
manners, and for permanent and powerful accomplishments in all de- 
partments of life, we must track its course along the ages, pausing 
longest over its career since the German Reformation. In the apos- 
tolic age it wrought wonders by the aid of miracle ; since that age it 
has wrought by the force of its truths. Our inquiry is not, what 
were the effects of a religion of miracles ? but, what are the achieve- 
merits of a religion of truth 1 In modern times Christianity stands by 
itself, vindicating its right to authority and dominion by its superhu- 
man character, as exhibited in its spiritual program, and appealing 
to its work as an evidence of its genuineness and ability to do what 
it claims. 

In its broadest aspect Christianity has been productive of a new, if 
not model, civilization. It must be conceded that an advanced civiliza- 
tion exists ; that is, a civilization superior to any thing either Rome 
or Greece reared and promoted now obtains in the world. Whence 
came it ? Without denying that other influences besides Christianity 
have contributed to the progress of mankind, it will appear on exam- 
ination that in all the forward movements of the race the dominant 
force has been religious, with certain subordinate forces, of which 
there are many, working in harmony with it. Much has been at- 
tributed to Stoical philosophy as an instrument of the regeneration of 
the East, but it must not be forgotten that, while it frowned on many 
vices, it was inefficient in restraining them, and certainly powerless in 
destroying them. Concede that Stoicism objected to wrong, it did 
not introduce the right, or even approve of it, as presented by the 
teachers of the new faith. Equally incompetent to reform the world 
is the commercial spirit to which philanthropists sometimes have 
turned with expectancy ; but it has been on trial for ages, resulting, 
it is true, in a broader and better view of fraternity and unity, as the 
duty of nations one toward another, but not resulting in moral eleva- 
tion or spiritual reform. 

Buckle's theory of materialistic agency in civilization, instituted 



540 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

in the interest of an infidelity that has become reckless in its attacks 
on Christianity, loses sight of the highest forces in existence, thus 
compromising itself by its ignorance, and forfeiting respect by its as- 
sumption of causes entirely inadequate for the promotion of modern 
civilization. Cousin has demonstrated that physical forces are coming 
to recognize the authority of man, and are ready to contribute to the 
realization of human purposes, which, in their last analysis, appear to 
be the ideal purposes of God. Civilization is not the product of na- 
ture ; nature is under the control of civilization. 

Whatever the relation of the material forces to civilization, and 
granting that they may exercise a controlling influence, it is patent 
to the student of history that civilizations resting on such forces alone, 
and in disregard of the moral basis, have died of infirmities and dis- 
abilities which, under Christian rule, would have been restrained, if 
not extinguished. Not a little has been written in praise of the 
ancient civilizations, particularly the Egyptian, the Babylonian, the 
Grecian, and the Koman, as the exponents of material ideas; but it 
is significant that none of them exists to-day. Egyptian civilization 
represented the idea of force, combined with superstition, both being 
manifested in pyramids and temples, and the worship of animals and 
idols. All through it was tainted with slavery, or the subjection of 
man to cruel and irresponsible authority. Yet this Cyclopean civi- 
ilization was unable to resist the tendency to decay, to which it so 
yielded that the relics of the days of its glory are few, indeed. The 
Babylonian civilization was the highest type of the lust principle, or the 
embodiment of the base, pleasure-loving spirit of man, and, though it 
maintained itself for fifteen hundred years, the site of its renowned 
capital can not to-day be identified ; not only its chief city perished, 
but the whole empire disappeared like a spider's fabric. Of superior 
excellence in some respects, less brutal and more intellectual, less 
luxurious and yet not less corrupt, was the subsequent Grecian civ- 
ilization, representing the perfection of art and the triumphs of phil- 
osophy ; yet was it a civilization speculating in moral questions with- 
out determining their value, and preferring a low level of public life 
while seeking to know the truth, and so perished. Roman civiliza- 
tion, less philosophical and more practical, sought to represent justice, 
and enforce it by methods peculiar to itself. Ambitious for universal 
dominion, and boastful of its history, it pressed on, but wrecked 
itself on the rocks which lie in the path of nations that disregard 
the first principles of morality, and center their supreme thought on 
themselves. 

The testimony of history is that a singular fatality has overtaken 
all civilizations destitute of moral principles. The epitaph of such 



THE DYNAMIC ELEMENT OF SOCIETY. 541 

civilizations may be reduced to a few words : they were born, they 
grew, they declined, they died. If materialism points with any pride 
to such civilizations, it should not be blind to the lesson their history 
discloses, for it makes plain that another basis is required if civiliza- 
tions are to endure. 

Succeeding all these, or at least different from them, is what may 
be denominated Christian civilization, an order of governmental life 
that has the promise of perpetuity in it, whose fate is not decay, 
corruption, and death. No one can affirm that such a civilization has 
had equal chances with the others, or that it has not met with obsta- 
cles in its attempt at development, for, all along its history, it has 
been resisted from within and without ; within, since its nature has 
been misunderstood by its own subjects ; without, since evil foresees 
its downfall in the triumph of the Christian conception of govern- 
ment. The ideal Christian civilization is yet future. Heretofore, as 
now, and now, as heretofore, material forces and antagonistic influ- 
ences too largely affect the spirit and purposes of our progressive 
civilizations; passion, lust, brute force, slavery, caste, ambition, in- 
temperance, and all the lower forces, are at work to prevent the sway 
of beneficent authority, and the erection of Christian governments 
among men. Yet such a civilization is the demand of the world. 
If Rome, in the days of her splendor, needed more than any thing 
else a new religion, so the world to-day needs, more than all things 
else, the inspiring touch of the Christian religion. Into our dark 
world the light of the new religion has shone, but as by broken and 
refracted rays. 

New political governments, having in view the suppression of vice 
and the conservation of virtue, and especially regardful of the natural 
rights of man, have been and still are a necessity, but they never 
arise as a philosophic suggestion, or as the product of the order of 
things. They come forth, if at all, as the result of the inspiring 
force of Christianity, although such force may have no definite recog- 
nition. Often it works so silently, its truths being gradually diffused 
throughout empires and nations, that even statesmen are apt to forget 
their controlling power, and take to themselves the credit of the 
advances in popular sentiment and political change. Disguised or 
open in its work, heeded or unheeded in its influence, Christianity is 
the dynamic element of the best civilizations. 

Christian government is the political ideal of the Gospel. For cen- 
turies this ideal had no recognition, though Christianity was ac- 
cepted in its true character as a divine religion. It was accepted as 
a religion only, its political genius being unknown. It was received 
as a spiritual system, without political bearings or suggestions. It 



542 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

was seen to be fundamental to Church life ; but governmental forms, 
principles, and laws were left to statesmen with political wisdom. 
Keligion and politics were separable. The mistake of ignoring relig- 
ion in the framework of government was at last discovered ; but no 
sooner did it dawn upon the national mind than the democratic idea 
began to grow. Political heresies were investigated, condemned, 
abandoned. The tyrannical doctrine of the divine right of kings was 
undermined. The trend of society was toward the original ideal. 
Granting that other influences were associated in the subversion of 
gross political sentiments, which justified oppression, slavery, and 
debauchery, still, more is due to the Christian ideal than to all other 
agencies combined. Without Christianity, other agencies had been 
ineffectual; with it, they accomplished something, receiving more 
credit than belongs to them. Buckle's materialism never rose as high 
as the original ideal ; Plato's best idea of government was impossible 
of realization. 

That all governments are not democratic in spirit and Christian in 
form, and that so-called Christian governments are still politically 
imperfect, often enacting laws contrary to the public welfare, and re- 
fusing to legislate in harmony with Christian teaching, establish 
that religion has not fully triumphed in the political thought of 
society. In Christian lands, there are institutions, monopolies, "cus- 
toms, and partisanships, which Christianity does not justify, and 
which it will overcome as its rightful influence is extended and 
obeyed. Tyrannies, race discriminations, socialism, oppression of 
woman, ignorance, poverty, and crime co-exist with the Christian 
religion in the state. Verily, this ought not to be. The work of cor- 
rection, assimilation, and regulation is slow, but it is not fruitless, and 
it will be complete in due time. As a political religion, as the basis 
of civilization, Christianity is not a failure. 

Quite as remarkable as the general effects of Christianity are the 
special results of its influence in the world. Admitting that, under 
its fostering care, a broader and a higher civilization has appeared, it 
is equally noteworthy that, in the narrower fields of human effort, its 
influence is no less conspicuous, and its power no less manifest. In 
the lowest sense, it is the inspirer of the material activity of human 
society. While the force of Christianity, as a religion, has been con- 
stantly emphasized, other features, and this in particular, have been 
disregarded. The result is, that the opinion prevails that its effects, 
outside of religious thought, are incidental and insubstantial. It is 
time to correct the misapprehension, for the relation of religion to 
labor, or the occupations of men, is most intimate, and the results of 
the union have been surprisingly great. The old religions threw no 



MACHINERY THE PRODUCT OF CHRISTIANITY. 543 

halo around physical toil, but degraded it. Brute force ruled in all 
the realms of life. The only birthright of man was the birthright to 
toil. By the terms of the old covenant, he must eat his bread in the 
sweat of his face ; but even so healthful a law the old religions carnal- 
ized to the last degree. Man, as an intellectual being, as spiritual 
and immortal, and, therefore, to be educated, disciplined, redeemed, 
the old faiths did not comprehend. Hence, man became a slave, a 
burden-bearer. He was oppressed, robbed of wages, reduced to 
starvation ; impossible results were exacted of him ; the consequence 
was the loss of manhood, the decline of aspiration, the extinction 
of freedom, the death of hope. 

To reverse this state of things, or rather, to extinguish the social 
order, and raise man from the dust, a new religion was needed. As 
Christianity asserted itself, a sympathetic religion was perceived to hover 
over the world, and the millions shouted for joy. Instead of adding 
to burdens, it lifted them ; instead of enslaving, it proclaimed free- 
dom ; instead of centering wealth, it diffused it ; instead of merging 
the individual in the State, it defined his responsibility. Under the 
new religious administration, the rights of property were guaranteed 
to all ; privateering on the seas, and confiscation on the land, were 
stigmatized as robbery, and punished as other crimes; legislation 
from the time of Constantine was favorable to the poor man ; and it 
became evident that, so long as the Golden Bule had authority, every 
man would reap the fruits of honest toil. 

This general change of sentiment was followed by other and far- 
reaching changes in the social structure, that secured to the common 
people additional safeguards and privileges, such as the right of suf- 
frage, and the right of representation in national councils, especially 
when taxed. Nor were such legal concessions lost on the laboring 
classes ; for, stimulated by larger privileges, and strengthened by self- 
respect, they sought to make labor honorable by a new consecration 
to its offices. It is a noteworthy fact, whatever the explanation, that 
in Christian lands the spirit of invention characterizes every depart- 
ment of human industry, reducing the difficulties of labor, and mul- 
tiplying the comforts, not only of the workingman, but of all classes 
of society. To affirm that agriculture is indebted to Christianity for 
machinery, ought to be a truism. To affirm that the inventions in 
Christian lands are the product of the Christian religion, is as true as 
to affirm that Churches and Sunday-schools are its products also. 
Even if this is true indirectly, it is true enough for our purpose. 
Heathendom is not prolific in invention, and can not manufacture 
the best instruments of labor. The locomotive, the telegraph, the 
sewing-machine, the reaper, the telephone, and the printing-press 



544 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

must be credited to the Christianity which is the root of the civiliza- 
tion under which such inventions are possible. Ours is a steam- 
engine civilization, in the sense that the civilization produced the 
engine, not the engine the civilization. Buckle's material forces did 
not produce Christian society, but Christianity developed, pointed 
out, and employed the material agencies by which the world has been 
lifted out of stagnation and death. 

Moreover, famines, which are of frequent occurrence in heathen 
lands, as in India and China, are impossible in Christian lands. 
National sympathies are too acute for one-half of a nation to permit 
the other half to starve. Besides, such is our knowledge of soils and 
seasons, and the relation of labor to harvests, that a failure of crops 
is an incident that does not affect the general welfare. The rewards 
of labor, the motives to steady, persistent toil, in a Christian country, 
are different from those in pagan countries; and, as a result, in the 
former, activity is manifested on a stupendous scale, inventions that 
almost accomplish miracles multiply, the blessings of peace extend, 
the idle are prompted to achievements, the ambitious are restrained 
by principles, evils are curtailed by an intelligent, moral, public sen- 
timent, and labor is honorable in the sight of men. In its sanctifica- 
tion of labor, its inspiration of the laborer, its stimulating effect on 
inventive genius, its condemnation of idleness, and its prevention of 
the evils usually associated with labor, Christianity commends itself 
to the students of social science and the statesmen of governments. 

The story of the effect of Christianity on, or its relation to, 
literature and education, is most wonderful, whether considered only in 
its general aspects, or minutely, and must answer all objection to its 
power to direct the thinking of the world. With the opening of the 
Dark Ages the Bible compulsorily retired as an inspiring agency, or 
was imprisoned in a cell, from which its light did not shine upon the 
outer world. At the call of Luther it came forth, never to return ; 
it spoke, and a listening world heard. Long prior to the Reformation 
an attempt was made to break the spell of dullness which had held in 
thralldom the whole civilized world, but it was only partially success- 
ful, and finally failed. The age of the schoolmen will be remembered 
as an age of scientific inquiry under the leadership of Roger Bacon, 
of philosophic investigation under the patronage of Duns Scotus, 
and of unsettlement of theologic dogmas under a host of thinkers ; 
but, marked by spirit, and promising in the beginning, it was only 
preliminary to the literary eagerness which became contagious 
throughout Christendom after Luther broke his chains. Before 
the Reformation Europe was without a practical or intense intel- 
lectual life ; since that period, which secured the right of private 



CHRISTIANITY IN LIT ERA TURE. 545 

judgment touching truth, and emancipated the intellect from all 
dogmatic grips, mankind have advanced in knowledge to a degree 
almost incredible. Science, some of whose advocates have had the 
temerity to charge that religion is hostile to its pursuits, never flour- 
ished, never discovered so much as since it was given a cdrte-bldnghe 
to ransack the universe for facts and reveal the laws under which the 
present physical order exists ; philosophy, piloted into the realm of 
mysteries by Christian teachers, has apprehended as never before the 
juxtaposition of all truth to the central idea of Christianity ; poetry 
turned to the Bible for epics and songs ; and the whole range of lit- 
erature has been electrified by the presence and inspiration of the 
new religion. Geology has had its expounders in Chalmers, Whe- 
well, Hitchcock, and Pye Smith, honored Christian names ; math- 
ematics has been represented by Isaac Barrow, Roger Coles, Matthew 
Stewart, and others, all defenders of the Bible ; and in a general 
way it is enough to mention Faraday, Samuel Clarke, Carpenter, 
Fleming, Sir William Thompson, Abbe Picard, Priestley, and Bradley, 
Christian thinkers all, as the exponents of scientific truths and dis- 
coveries, to establish the indebtedness of scientific thought to religious 
influence. The same is true touching poetry. Neither Milton could 
have written " Paradise Lost," nor Dante his " Inferno " had not the 
Scriptures furnished the facts and suggested the purpose to use them. 
Cowper, Montgomery, Toplady, Heber, and Charles Wesley, the 
authors of sacred hymns, were less indebted to their genius than to 
the Scriptures for subjects, experiences, truths, and melodies. 
The same may be said of Coleridge, Tennyson, Longfellow, and 
Willis ; and even Byron wrote best when under the inspiration of 
the Hebrew spirit. Strike Christian sentiment from modern poetry, 
and it would be equal to expelling oxygen from the atmosphere. 

All literature has equally shared in inspirations from this common 
source, though the debt is more obvious in some departments than in 
others. Let it be philosophical, historic, ethnic, religious, or scientific, 
the department has been affected more or less by the commanding 
truths of Christianity, either modified by them, or vainly attempting 
to modify them ; but whether resisting or accepting them, whether 
harmony or struggle be the result of contact with them, the effect is 
marvelous and usually visible. Skeptical literature owes its possibility 
to that which it assails. Voltaire was possible only because twelve 
apostles lived and died ; Renan had written nothing had not Christ 
and Paul lived and taught ; Hume never had discussed miracle had 
not the miracle-worker first appeared ; Matthew Arnold writes because 
there was a Christ. 

Again, the incidental effect of the truths of Revelation in lit- 

35 



546 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

erature is quite as impressive as the more direct and positive in- 
fluence. The majority of books not religious relate to subjects which 
it has suggested and it is difficult to write on things entirely outside of 
it. Even the novelist gives a Christian tinge to his stories, or im- 
pregnates them with Christian sentiment as the means of commend- 
ing them to public opinion. One lays down " The Tale of Two 
Cities " by Charles Dickens in tears because the hope of the resurrec- 
tion is mingled with the execution of a doomed man. " Ben-Hur" by 
General Wallace is but a tale of the Christ. The thought of God, 
as developed in the Old Testament ; the character of Christ, por- 
trayed in such simplicity in the Gospels ; the thrilling ideas of in- 
spiration, miracle, prophecy, retribution, and immortality find their 
way into public thought, crowd the magazines, fill the newspapers, 
and multiply volumes without end. 

On the other side, what libraries have issued in defense, exposition, 
and elaboration of Christianity ! Since the invention of the printing 
press pens have been busy with the discussion of the great Biblical 
problems, in an attempt to elucidate their mysteries or find the limits 
of human thought, and the treatises on such subjects are practically 
inexhaustible. At one time the drift of thought is toward the his- 
torical evidences of Christianity ; at another it turns to the philo- 
sophical phases of religion ; yesterday it discussed miracle ; to-day it 
is hermeneutical ; once it was doctrinal ; now it seeks the practical 
elements of religion ; once it considered heaven and hell as eternal 
states ; now it mutters purgatory, an intermediate world, and a 
second probation ; hitherto the mode of baptism was a subject of 
interest ; at present the meaning of Sheol is of more consequence. 
Thus the discussion of truth goes on, the Christian thinker having 
gone beyond Calvin, Edwards, and Luther to clearer visions of the 
divine revelations. 

For the preservation of the Anglo-Saxon language, the world is in- 
debted more to the Bible than to the ordinary agencies believed to 
be sufficient to insure the stability and purity of a living language. 
Containing idiomatic English, and being read by the people as no 
other book is read, the Bible holds them to a common speech, and 
tends to create a universal language, thereby aiding the slow-growing 
doctrine of the unity of the race. The great objection to the 
Revised Version of the New Testament is that, while it is faithful to 
the original Greek, it violates the idiomatic Saxon with which the 
public mind is familiar, and from which it is unwilling to depart, 
showing a disposition to make the Saxon the standard of correct 
language. Careful linguists inform us that while fully one-third of 
Gibbon's books consist of words not Anglo-Saxon in form or origin, 



THE INSPIRATION OF POPULAR EDUCATION. 547 

and while Shakespeare derives one-sixth of his words from foreign 
sources, and Addison one-eighth, only one-twenty^ninth of the words 
in the Bible have a foreign complexion. This speaks much for the 
purity of the English tongue and is a guaranty of its future stability 
and growth. 

In the matter of popular education Christianity must be credited 
with an influence so promotive of it that in its absence, or where it 
is resisted the masses are in ignorance and without mental aspiration. 
In reply to this position reference is occasionally made to the 
universities of India and China, whose curricula, it is claimed, equal 
those of the universities of the United States ; but this is not true ; 
besides, the masses of those countries are in the chains of an 
ignorance harder to be broken than the physical chains of slavery. 
Popular education is unknown in the Orient. With shame it must 
be said that Christian countries have been slow enough in providing 
for universal education ; that in our land the illiteracy is extensive 
and threatening the safety of our institutions; and that in Roman 
Catholic countries it is still more appalling. This unhappy condition, 
however, is the result of a narrowness not born of Christianity, of a 
prejudice that a false religion or a blind judgment would sanction, 
but which the new religion is bound to overcome. In Christian lands, 
where religion has half a chance, colleges and schools do flourish, 
ignorance is being limited, education is regarded as the sign of man- 
hood, and a general intellectual desire obtains among the people. In 
England, Oxford and Cambridge are the fruits of the Christian re- 
ligion. In the United States, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, 
Amherst, Ohio Wesleyan, DePauw, as universities, and hundreds 
of seminaries and academies, were born of Christian influence. Per- 
haps all our colleges, save Girard College, are the direct result of 
Christian benevolence and teaching. 

In the matter of public schools Christian nations lead, Prussia 
standing at the head, with the United States second, and England 
and Greece not far behind. Such fruits indicate the worth of the 
tree that bears them. 

Nor in this category of effects would it do to omit the influence of 
Christianity on Art, for its divinest achievements have been realized 
under the inspirations of the true religion. Long before the Master 
walked the earth the fine arts flourished in the East, and, so far as 
genius directed, they were developed to perfection. In the age of Per- 
icles sculpture reached the limit of beauty and finish ; beyond the 
models of the artists of that day no nation has gone. Egypt, too, 
devoted herself to figures of stone, chiseling them rather out of granite 
than marble ; and Rome, ever imitative of the colossal and the beauti- 



548 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

fill, endeavored to excel her masters, and painted what she could 
not chisel. 

But, applying a supreme test, what was the effect of pagan or 
pre-Christian art on society, government, and religion? In a single 
sentence, pagan art was the source of the corruptions of social life 
that obtained throughout the East, and justified the terrible descrip- 
tion of Rome as given by Paul in his Epistle to the Romans. Dr. 
John Gillie states : ' ' It is unnecessary to crowd the picture, since it 
may be observed in one word that the vices and extravagances which 
are supposed to characterize the declining ages of Greece and Rome 
took root in Athens during the administration of Pericles, the most 
splendid and the most prosperous in the Grecian annals." If asked 
how ancient art became so debasing, and what was its relation to the 
public life, the answer is, that it appealed to the sensual in man, de- 
veloping the lower life, and debauching the public taste. Designed 
to minister to the aesthetic, it forgot its mission, or confounded it in a 
ministry to the lustful and baser elements in humanity. The love of 
the beautiful, divinely inwrought in human nature, was supplanted 
by an expressed preference for the carnal, resulting in licentiousness, 
degradation, and national overthrow. Besides, the range of ancient 
art was exceedingly limited, its subjects coming more frequently from 
mythology than from nature, biography, or history. Bacchus, Venus, 
Apollo, Ceres, and Juno engaged the sculptor's chisel oftener than 
the heads of generals and rulers. Neither poetry nor philosophy had 
any elevating effect on art. In the midst of pagan ideas, it rose no 
higher than their level, and at last, sinking beneath that level, drew 
all down to its depths of degradation. 

Turn we now to Christian art, whose range is as extensive as his- 
tory, whose subjects are as numerous and various as biography, 
nature, and the Bible can present. Pagan art largely devoted itself 
to sculpture; Christian art, to painting. The best. products of Chris- 
tian art are representations of Bible scenes, and from the hands of 
masters who have lived within the last three or four centuries, or 
since Christianity has taken a modern aspect and been endowed with 
a modern energy and purpose. As specimens, and as indicating the 
spirit of art since the Reformation, we need only mention Leonardo 
da Vinci's "The Last Supper," Raphael's "Transfiguration." and 
Michael Angelo's "The Last Judgment." That the galleries of 
Europe are adorned with paintings of the Temptation, the Baptism, 
the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension, is proof of the 
sacredness of art ; and that the Old Testament furnished such sub- 
jects as Creation, Eden, the Flood, the Ark, Abraham's Sacrifice, the 
Tabernacle, and the Temple, for the painters' pencils, is evidence 



THE PATRONS OF THE FINE ARTS. 549 

that art has discarded mythology, and preferred the facts and events 
of Bible times and history. Even Gustave Dore, who was not Chris- 
tian in faith, regarded his artistic Christ as his masterpiece ; and 
certainly his representations of New Testament events were not below 
par. Take Christ or the Bible out of modern art, and it shrivels 
like a wrinkled parchment. 

To be sure, other subjects than the religious have engaged the 
thought and skill of modern artists ; military scenes, historical events, 
landscape views, and fancy sketches, occupy the entire time of many 
celebrated painters; but it must be allowed that, on the whole, art 
is predisposed to the Christian idea, and is consecrated to the moral 
elevation of the race. This is the difference between ancient and 
modern art, the former degrading, the latter ennobling man. 

Yet this difference can only be allowed with qualification, for 
Christian art is not entirely free from pagan influence ; and so far 
forth as pagan ideas have infected modern art, it has lost in moral 
power ; while so far forth as it has confined itself to its legitimate 
mission of moral instruction, it has promoted the objects of religion. 
It must also be conceded that those nations that have fostered Chris- 
tian art the most are more corrupt than Protestant nations that have 
not considered it the handmaid of religion, a fact that needs ex- 
planation. Germany is the nursery of socialism ; France, of infidel- 
ity ; Italy, of Roman Catholicism ; they patronize the fine arts. 
Neither England nor the United States pays a premium on the arts, 
and yet both are advanced in civilization and religious activity be- 
yond Germany, France, and Italy. What account can be given of 
these facts? Is it a credit to Christianity that it fosters the fine arts 
at all? We think it is. The evils we speak of are not inherent in 
art, or inevitable products ; some of them are political in their nature, 
others are social, others intellectual, and some religious, and might or 
might not exist with or without the fine arts. Pure art is possible, 
and has a mission. That it has not been in the ascendant is because 
Christianity has been corrupted by paganism and enfeebled by the 
Papacy, all its products being more or less modified by the spirit of 
one or the other. In its Protestant form, Christianity has rarely ex- 
pressed itself in art, resigning its interest to the Roman Catholic 
monopoly of the aesthetic ideals. For it must be remembered that 
the great artists of modern times have been, and are, Roman Cath- 
olics, men who like to paint Madonnas, angels, and martyrdoms, and 
who, going to the Bible for their subjects, pervert it in the interest of 
their own faith. But if while in bondage to Roman Catholic teach- 
ing it has suggested the masterpieces in the Louvre and the Vatican, 
what would it not do under the purer guidance of Protestant thought 



550 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

and liberty ? If Christianity has any duty to perform respecting art, 
it is to rescue it from the superstitious grasp of mediseval thought, 
and clothe it with the nineteenth century beauty and aim. 

Passing to architecture, Christianity, as iu other departments, has 
exerted a prominent and wholesome influence, traceable from the 
days of Constantine down to the present time. Religion has always 
dictated temple architecture, the structures built in its name being 
the expression of some dominant thought, or the embodiment of some 
divine purpose. Christianity has been the originating or suggesting 
cause of the historic and current styles of Church building in Europe, 
as it has been the world over where its presence has been recognized. 
Granting that the Ionic, Doric, and Corinthian styles of columns had 
a pagan origin, and have not been eclipsed for beauty by any mod- 
ern discovery or invention, it is true to say that Byzantine architec- 
ture and ecclesiastical edifices constructed after the Greek or Latin 
cross were possible only because Christianity was the dominant re- 
ligion, and the Church sought to express that religion in the forms 
of its edifices. Church architecture owes little to pagan models. 
Back of the Christian period, the temple was patterned after a divine 
suggestion, and it is noteworthy that all succeeding temple structures 
are but modifications of the original ideal given to Solomon. From 
the dawn of the Christian era the different styles of Church building, 
the Roman Christian, the Byzantine, the Romanesque, the Gothic, 
and the Renaissance have appeared- as the products of Christian 
ideas, representing to the outside world the principal factors of the 
Christian religion. It is not claimed that Christianity has influenced 
the styles of dwellings as it has those of basilicas and tombs ; but 
that it has contributed to the improvement of architecture, and that 
in Christian lands the dwelling-house has been beautified, are among 
the facts that establish the helpful influence of religion in the com- 
mon spheres of life. 

Eagerly we proceed to notice the relation of Christianity to re- 
formatory movements, or its aid in the removal and extinction of mam- 
moth public evils, for its power must be felt here if anywhere. As 
an operating force Christianity is apparently slow, working with al- 
most careless interest in human affairs, but its purpose is never ob- 
scured or unknown, and its final declaration is always executed. It 
stands in open hostility to all illegitimacy, whether political, social, 
or religious ; it is in alliance with no evil ; it is on fraternal terms 
with no wrong. At the same time it is not a direct antagonist, or 
violent opposer of wrong in the sense of a persistent and immediate 
destroyer of it. It does not precipitately array its forces against evil 
and overthrow it by a single blow, but it is an undermining force 



UNDERMINING METHODS OF PROVIDENCE. 551 

that, like sappers, requires time for its work. Witness the long 
reign of Mohammedanism in the Orient, a single providential order, 
a single divine movement would extinguish it; recall the weary- 
despotism of feudalism, it might have been speedily overturned had 
God's hand interposed ; observe the slow decadence of slavery in the 
world — such a gigantic evil had subsided long ago had the provi- 
dential purpose ripened fast ; see how polygamy has dominated the 
Oriental nations — it ought to give place to the Scriptural idea of mar- 
riage ; observe that intemperance has invaded society and shaken the 
altars of religion ; and the inquiry is pertinent, Does God reign, or 
is Christianity able to cope with the great evils in the world ? 

This, however, is a very superficial statement of the case, or at 
least is not a broad view of the methods of God's government and 
of the agencies he employs for the reduction of evil. To the remark 
that Christianity is an undermining religion must be added another, 
and that is, that it is an inspiring religion, propelling to just that 
activity required for the final extinction of the evils that afflict the 
world and demonstrating by this method its positive inclination to 
righteousness and its purpose to extinguish all forces opposed to it. 
For the evils that infest human society, disturb its peace, and threaten 
its safety, mankind are for the most part directly responsible and 
must themselves organize for their removal. God sends the cyclone, 
the lightning, the sirocco, the tempest ; against these we may pray, 
asking that the divine hand be stayed ; but he never sent intemper- 
ance, or slavery, or Mormonism, and, therefore, is not to be invoked 
to put them away. That belongs to men to do. 

Let us be understood. Moral evils originate with men and must 
be abandoned by men. The relation of Christianity to such evils is 
not that of a destroyer, but that of an inspirer, quickening the re- 
formatory spirit in man, and prompting him to abolish evil. As the 
destruction of evil is in man's hands, its long reign in the world is 
explained. Had the Almighty assumed the prerogative of Destroyer, 
evil had disappeared long ago ; but as man must be destroyer he 
dallies, hesitates, debates, reluctantly puts evil away, and sometimes 
after advancing against it blackslides and returns to his idols. This 
explains the rise and fall of evils. By its undermining processes, 
and its inspiring influences, Christianity aids in the extinction of 
evil, the amelioration of human ills, and the moral elevation of 
society. 

What has been the result? The annals of the Eomans abound 
in gladiatorial scenes, cruel in themselves, and debasing of the com- 
mon taste ; slaves, prisoners, culprits, and Christians were compelled 
to fight with wild beasts or with one another in the Coliseum or in 



552 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the theaters ; emperors, nobles, and patricians regarding the spectacles 
as amusements for their benefit, and encouraging them by their pat- 
ronage. In vain Constantine endeavored to suppress them ; in vain 
were the denunciations of moral teachers ; in vain did pure-minded 
philosophers condemn. For four centuries after the Incarnation the 
bloody exhibitions continued with the connivance of royal authority 
and the support of the higher classes of the imperial cities. How 
were they finally suppressed ? Read the story of the victory of Ale- 
machus, an Eastern monk, in the Flavian theater, and learn that the 
extinction of the gladiatorial spirit was due to the courage of a Chris- 
tian. Even so feudalism went down under the reformatory demands 
of the Gospel. Likewise slavery, though now not an unknown evil 
on the face of the earth, has been banished from Christian and civ- 
ilized lands, never to return, for it is a historic sign of providential 
progress that when a national evil is overthrown it is never restored. 
To be sure, it cost something to expel it from the United States, as 
the expulsion of any evil means a struggle and suffering, but its go- 
ing was a victory for the Gospel. Through the benevolent spirit of 
Christianity reforms in prison life have been instituted ; wretched 
punishments have been abandoned ; tortures have ceased ; and a new 
idea of penalty has modified criminal legislation. The spirit of feud, 
so rampant in the days of chivalry, and which had something to do 
witli the establishment of the order of knight-errantry, no longer broods 
over the social circle ; the duel is rare and under ban ; and so rapid has 
been the growth of the philanthropic spirit, and so universal the de- 
sire for peace, that arbitration is being resorted to as the best method 
for the settlement of international differences and difficulties. Surely 
these are no small results, effected largely by the presence of the 
peace-inspiring religion in the world. 

The Christian home is the fruit of the Christian religion. Outside of 
'Christian lands, or where other religions prevail, the basis of the 
ifamily institution is tyrannical and unsafe, domestic habits and cus- 
toms are corrupt and profligate, superstition prostrates individual en- 
ergy and purpose, and domestic sweetness and beauty are unknown. 
For the model family or the ideal home one will not go to India, 
China, or Japan. In Siam many of the Chinese live in floating 
houses, and are as nomadic as the Bedouins, or as the men who in 
primitive times clothed themselves with skins and dwelt in caves. 
In pagan and Mohammedan countries the social position of woman 
is incompatible with a refined and elevated condition, her capabili- 
ties for a larger and more helpful life are unrecognized, her instincts 
are smothered, her rights denied, and the home of which she should 
be the center and pride is little else than a nursery of vice. Brah- 



THE MONOGAMOUS PRINCIPLE ASSERTED. 553 

minism and Buddhism shut the women up in their zenanas, cover their 
faces with veils, screen the windows of their apartments with lattice- 
work, and teach them that they are degraded and without souls. 
What sorrow fills a household when a girl is born ! No wonder that 
polygamy, with all its related vices, is authorized in such countries, 
and that woman is a toy or beast of burden. Even the Koran takes 
this view of woman, sanctioning the believer's right to at least four 
wives, though the sheiks of the desert often have many more. In 
polygamy, female degradation, and domestic cruelty, the homes in 
pagan lands have had their birth. 

As enunciated in the Scriptures, the true basis of marriage is 
monogamy, but, like every other good principle, this doctrine has 
come down the ages, opposed by malice and ignorance, and has run 
the gauntlet of sophistry, paganism, superstition, and crime. As a 
Christian principle, it confronted the social corruptions of Rome in 
the days of Paul and Seneca, when, indeed, vice was on the throne, 
and innocence was a barren ideality. Stoicism was absolutely power- 
less to check the reign of the social vice among the aristocratic classes, 
who lived only for pleasure, and sought it in their own degradation. 
To no lower depths of corruption could society go, when, as Uhl- 
horn represents, "friends exchanged wives," and, as Tertullian re- 
marks, " they marry only to be divorced." This is enough. To turn 
the tide of infamy, to condemn the public licentiousness, to restore the 
idea of purity, to establish the home in its ideal aspects, was an un- 
dertaking all other religions shrank from, as being absolutely un- 
promising of any good. In this emergency Christianity assumed the 
task, entered upon it with vigor, demolished the altars of shame, 
raised woman from the pit, and restored to man his lost manhood 
and virtue. The change in the social life of the State was immediate 
and unequivocal. 

Thus has it ever been when the true principles of religion have been 
announced, and the sincerity of the conscience invoked. Against the 
domination of these principles polygamy, bigamy, and lust have protested 
with lecherous voices, asserting their priority in the social institution, 
and even defending themselves as inviolable and legitimate. In vin- 
dicating Mormonism, Joseph Smith declared that four-fifths of man- 
kind believed in and practiced polygamy, while only one-fifth held to 
monogamy. So extravagant a statement has not gone uncontradicted, 
but it is confessed that the monogamous principle of Christianity met 
with obstruction from a majority of the races and peoples of the 
globe; hence its triumph is all the more conspicuous, and indicative 
of its power in the regulation of the domestic life of the world. 

Insisting that the model home must be founded on the Gospel 



554 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

idea of marriage, and that this idea is in the ascendant, it is as noto- 
rious as it is painful that in many of the States of Christian America 
divorce laws are so numerous and so elastic that the marriage relation 
can be dissolved without effort, and illegitimate combinations there- 
after formed. This is one of the evils incident to the reign of the 
higher principle of marriage, which must be combated until checked 
and overthrown. However, bigamy and polygamy have no countenance 
in law or custom in these lands, and exist, if it all, in violation of 
law. Here, if anywhere, the model home may be found ; here 
woman is the helpmeet of the husband, and the mother is the ruler 
of the household ; here God is worshiped at the domestic altar, and 
purity makes sacred both conjugal and filial relations. Lyman 
Beecher's and Martha Washington's homes were the products of the 
Christian idea. 

This is the beginning of Christian society, with its contents of 
order, fraternity, unity, liberty, and philanthropy. The great thought 
that of one blood God made all the nations of the earth is of Gospel 
origin, signifying the unity of the race, and necessarily the equality 
of man before God and under the Gospel. In its historical develop- 
ment society drifted away from the fundamental principle ; as a fact, 
it never was organized on this principle, and left to itself, it never 
voluntarily would adopt it as the prime element of governmental 
order and life. In the legendary period of Greece the theory was 
advocated that men were composed of gold or silver or iron, as they 
represented different virtues, and that dissimilarity of character estab- 
lished a difference of origin, which prevented the recognition of unity 
and equality of rights. Such a spirit has always and everywhere pre- 
vailed, except where Christianity arrayed itself against it, and breathed 
the doctrine of ■ ■ one blood " into the veins of human thought. In 
India the system of caste has exercised a tremendous power in retard- 
ing the growth of the Gospel doctrine, and in degrading the people 
below the level of a common heritage, imposing upon Christianity 
in its attempt to uplift and reorganize society a task no other re- 
ligion ever encountered. In Judea, in Peter's time, it was difficult 
for the Jew to recognize the Gentile as superior to a dog in rights or 
privileges, the moral distance between them being too great for any 
religion but Christianity to bridge. At the present time heathendom 
is infected with the suspicion that different men are made of different 
kinds of clay, entitling some to lower and others to higher stations, 
which suspicion receives the sanction of the popular religions. Hence 
the indoctrinating the heathen nations on this subject implies antag- 
onism to prevailing religions, as well as honeycombing the entire 
social structure with the truth. 



POPULAR ETHICAL NOTIONS. 555 

In Christian lands, ostensibly committed to this paragon of phil- 
anthropic doctrines, a work remains to be done before the millennium 
shall have dawned, for a spirit of oppression, akin to caste, still men- 
aces the peace of society, debasing the sensibilities and corrupting the 
fountains of justice. In England and Ireland the oppression of the 
poor by land-owners and general misgovernment of the lower classes 
is crushing out the life of the people, who, in resistance thereto, are 
employing dynamite and studying the tactics of revolution. In the 
United States the spirit of monopoly is the great danger to civil lib- 
erty ; the rights of the masses are ignored ; and the cry of the social- 
ist, whose incentive is less a moral than a physical want, is heard 
from the mountains to the sea. This is in contravention of the Chris- 
tian idea, to which society must return if it escape disorganization 
and the terrors of nihilism. Recognizing the unity of the race and 
the equality of man, caste will disappear from heathendom, and op- 
pression no longer curse Christendom ; society will rest securely, be- 
cause on a Christian basis. Christian society is one of the perennial 
fruits of Christianity. 

In Christian lands, too, as nowhere else, there is a genuine and 
popular enthusiasm for morality, the evidence of the working of the 
ethical spirit of the Christian religion. In heathen lands the moral 
condition of society may be likened to a stagnant pool, sending forth 
corruption and death ; the commonest virtues have little sway over 
the multitudes, and are discarded by the aristocracies ; truth is at a 
fearful discount in China and Egypt ; honesty is rare ; theft is a 
breach to be punished when discovered; murder is justifiable for 
causes without number ; and as for patriotism, benevolence, humility, 
patience, brotherly kindness, and the forgiving spirit, they are seldom 
seen, and even then are usually the fruit of the Gospel. Paganism 
is the nursery of immorality ; its ethical standards are without prac- 
tical virtue; the popular ethical notion is the subject of ridicule and 
satire. Mohammedanism, apparently more careful in ethical discrim- 
inations, presents a one-sided and distorted picture of humanity molded 
by its influence. 

How different the condition in Christian lands! The ethical 
notion is at the basis of public life ; it constitutes the root of individ- 
ual character ; it is the standard by which all transactions and events 
are judged. There is a tendency to moral order, a growth of the 
moral sentiments, a repression of criminal pursuits, and an inculcation 
of the highest virtues in communities dominated by the Christian 
idea. Truth, honesty, benevolence, and patriotism are held in such 
repute that he who does not practice them goes without recognition 
or reward. Even in circles in which Christianity is not formally ac- 



556 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

knowledged in its religious character, the claims of ethical righteous- 
ness are authoritative, and considered the indispensable condition of 
happiness and progress. 

In a very congratulatory way we may refer to Christianity as the 
source of the multiplied benevolent agencies and institutions which have 
been established for the comfort and relief of the unfortunate, and for 
the recovery of the fallen and the outcast. Asylums for the blind, 
the insane, the deaf and dumb; poor-houses, children's homes, and 
hospitals ; reformatory schools and homes for the diseased and vicious ; 
soldiers' homes, and pensions amounting to millions annually, tell not 
only of misfortune and the reign of disease and poverty in this world, 
but also of that benevolent spirit that, taking its inspiration from the 
sympathetic Christ, provides relief, comfort, education, and salvation 
for the needy. Such institutions are almost unknown outside of 
Christendom. It is reported that an asylum for the unfortunate 
among the priesthood exists in China, and we observed a lunatic asy- 
lum in Judea; but it can not be denied that the benevolent asylum 
is the special product of Christianity. Were blind Bartimeus' living 
in Ohio he would not sit long by the wayside, but be taken to Co- 
lumbus, and clothed, fed, educated, saved. The deaf and dumb would 
also be transported thither, and even the leper would be housed and 
cured. For these and all other such benefits the world is not a little 
indebted to the religion of the Nazarene. 

Going still higher in the scale of*beneficent enterprise, Christian- 
ity has impelled the Christian Church, within a century or two, to or- 
ganize for the redemption of the world, concreting this purpose into mis- 
sionary societies, which are only prevented from turning the earth into 
a paradise again by the unwillingness of Christian people to sacrifice 
sufficiently for the attainment of the purpose. By so much as the 
Gospel is world-wide in its provisions, truths, and benefits, by as much 
the Church is bound to spread the tidings of salvation to the utter- 
most parts of the earth ; and this it will do in the years to come. 
First relieving mankind of temporary evils and supplying the temporal 
wants of the race, the Church, as it is fully enlightened in the Gos- 
pel, turns its endeavor to the positive spiritual enlightenment of the 
nations, demonstrating the adaptation of Christianity to all peoples, 
and paving the way for its universal dominion among them. Its 
Churches and Sunday-schools planted everywhere ; its teachers and 
missionaries going to the ends of the earth ; the Gospel proving itself 
to be the power of God unto salvation on the banks of the Ganges as 
on the banks of the Mississippi, and in Peking as in Cincinnati ; a 
child buried with Christian rites on the Sandwich Islands as in Amer- 
ica ; the Sabbath-day observed in Japan as in England ; the Chris- 



THE NEW IN CHRISTIANITY. 557 

tian secular school opened in Damascus as in Cleveland, constitute a 
few of the many items of the history of the Gospel in this world, and 
are proofs of a divine plan to redeem all nations, and to let heaven 
descend to the earth. If we speak of the universal conquest of Chris- 
tianity through these agencies, predicating faith for the future on 
the history wrought out in evangelization, one may suspect us of 
Utopiauism, or charge us with being the promoter of a fanatical and 
impracticable purpose; but Christianity is practical Utopianism; it is 
realistic optimism. 

In the highest sense, Christianity is a religion. Whatever its 
achievements in the human realm, whatever the inspiration it lends 
to human activity in the realization of its aspirations, its greatest 
power is as a religion, and its inexhaustible possibilities are in the 
religious realm. To trace its influence outside of that realm is profit- 
able and assuring. We have seen its effect on civilization and the 
industrial pursuits of men ; we have observed its impregnation of 
literature and refining tendency on art; we have witnessed its initia- 
tion of reforms, and its sovereignty in home-life ; we have noted its 
teachings of morality, its organization of the benevolent spirit into 
societies for the relief of the needy, broadening out into a world-wide 
project for the salvation of the race; but its chief excellence is in its 
effect on human character, its effect as a spiritual religion. It is the 
religion of regeneration, the religion of faith, the religion of revela- 
tion, the religion of atonement and salvation. By its converting 
power, it demonstrates its divine origin ; by its revelations of truth, 
it establishes its supernatural character ; by the satisfaction it affords 
its adherents, it proves its sufficiency ; by its ability to deliver men 
from sin, to support them in death, and open immortality to final 
vision and expiring life, it may claim to be from God. 

If a religion may be tested by its fruits, Christianity is the eternal 
sentiment of God, 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE NETW IN CHRISTIANITY. 

WHEN Roger Bacon pushed his scientific inquiries into the secrets 
of nature, revealing facts that astonished the ignorance of his 
times, and laid the foundation for a broad philosophy in the future, 
it was believed that he was in league with Satan, the retribution for 
which was ten years in a dungeon in Paris. In a later day, and for 



558 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the still milder offense of publishing a treatise on logic in English, 
Sir Thomas Wilson likewise suffered incarceration at the hands of the 
papal authorities — a proof that the spirit of progress was considered 
heretical, sinful, and hurtful, and should be quenched in its incipi- 
ency," and by the punishment of its advocates. 

The present is a different age, imbued with a different purpose, 
branding ignorance, instead of knowledge, as the foe of happiness, 
and rewarding instead of decapitating those who open doors hitherto 
shut to explorer and thinker. Golgotha now stares conservatism in 
the face ; it stands no longer in the path of the truth-finder. Zeal 
for knowledge is wide-spread, and is the key to the progress of the 
nineteenth century. The demand everywhere is for the new, arising 
from a dissatisfaction with the old, because of its imperfections, its 
traditional burdens, its inconsistent teachings, and its degrading 
power. Lord Bacon said, truth is the daughter of time, not of 
authority. Time is the bearer of new truths ; authority is a tyrant 
in the realm of thought. Truth, not tyranny, is the cry of the hour. 
Outside of religion, especially in science, history, and philosophy, 
investigation has not only been rapid, but it has succeeded in crowd- 
ing into outer darkness many errors almost sacred from age, and 
establishing faith in nature on entirely new foundations. In the 
circles of religious thought, despite the conservative tendency, a 
change is apparent in opinion, touching the necessity of a re-opening 
of questions, and a larger exploration of fundamental truth. 

With the purpose to ascertain all there is in Christianity, to ex- 
pose its hidden foundations, and examine its rare claims, so well 
attested by historic evidence, we are in entire sympathy ; and this 
sympathy is grounded in the general fact that Christianity, as yet, is 
substantially an undeveloped religion. Neither exhausted on the one 
hand, nor completed on the other, it remains for this or succeeding 
generations to fathom its depths, gather the unseen pearls at the 
bottom, and report all the glories of the invisible. 

It is easy to believe there is a thousand-fold more in Christianity 
than has been produced or discovered. It is any thing but small or 
effete ; its magnitude has never been measured ; its volume of power 
has never been calculated ; its range of influence has never been 
surmised. To those who, through spiritual curiosity or intellectual 
aspiration, covet a knowledge of the new in religion, it is enough to 
say, that it is not necessary to seek a new religion so long as there is 
so much that is new in Christianity. The suspicion that Christianity 
has nothing new to offer mankind ; that, because its book of revela- 
tions is complete, a knowledge of new truths is impossible, — can only 
be maintained by those who fancy they have exhausted the meaning 



THE ANTIQUITY OF RELIGION. 559 

of religion, or reached the bottom of the great ocean of thought with 
their measuring lines of inquiry. If it is imagined that the world 
will outgrow the doctrines of monotheism, providence, incarnation, 
Messiah ship, crucifixion, atonement, regeneration, prayer, resurrec- 
tion, and immortality, it must be on the supposition that it will ad- 
vance beyond present interpretations of them ; for, until the doctrines 
themselves are exhaustively understood, they must remain as subjects 
of thought and investigation. Going beyond an interpretation is not 
the same as going beyond the truth to which the interpretation 
is fastened. 

The spirit of change is in the world. Death is the prophecy of 
birth. In keeping with this order of things, governments have passed 
through all varieties, from despotism to democracy ; institutions have 
appeared and departed, being succeeded by purer forms, as the feudal 
system gave place to enlarged freedom in Europe ; philosophies, too, 
rise, make their obeisance, and die ; and all religions are undergoing 
modifications, presaging their extinction. Will Christianity be an 
exception to this order? Will its old truths survive age? 

The natural tendency of Christianity, amid the environment of 
change, is to perpetuity. Error, sin, physical forms, may perish, but 
truth is immortal. Truth, philosophical or ethical, husbands its 
vitality for future conflicts, and comes out of the depths of the ages, 
scarred by opposition, but ready to inflict a paralytic stroke upon 
error; and it must attain, by virtue of its nature, the highest place as 
a governing element among the forces of progress. The decadence 
of Christianity will be the decadence of truth, a result that can not 
be contemplated with composure. The relation of Christianity to 
truth, or the assumption that Christianity is truth, is involved in the 
preliminary consideration of the subject, justifying the statement that 
the fortunes of the one are the fortunes of the other. 

Religion, or the idea of religion, is old; the great question is, is 
there any thing new in it? Is the old consistent with the new? Is 
the old sufficient f Is it exhaustive? 

Religion is old; this is its glory. It bears the imprint of the 
Almighty upon it ; it dates from the beginning ; its ark is fringed 
with the leaves of Paradise ; its music is that of the early morning ; 
and its- message is embalmed in the innocence and purity of the first 
day. Creation and Religion are the twin products of Eternal Power 
and Wisdom. The one carries us into the region of the other; both 
exhibit the marks of the same paternity. Recently, a few travelers 
entered an immense cavern, unlighted by sun or candle; it was dark, 
deep, and wide ; soon a red light was kindled, and it illuminated floor 
and roof, showing the broken forms of stalagmite and stalactite, and 



560 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

making visible what was unknown to the outer world. Religion is 
the inextinguishable torch, the ever-burning light, that illuminates 
the retreating Past, that gives us the key to history, indicates the 
plan of creation, and writes out the secret of the universe and the 
story of its beginning. 

But is religion nothing more than a mausoleum ? Is it the tomb 
of truths? the alcove of ancient dust? or is it a modern, vital force, as 
quickening in its influence to-day as when it first chanted the glory 
of God ? Is it not the only genuine Janus, looking into the past and 
future at the same time? Surely, the old alone does not constitute 
all of religion ; but, like a speck of gold in the sand, it must be the 
sign of larger treasures and more inexhaustible riches. New wonders 
eclipsing the old, new truths explanatory of the old, new prospects 
surpassing even prophetic visions, are all possible under the reign of 
a religion that opens its doors wide to the advance of mortals. Sat- 
isfaction with the old has blinded the vision to the new, and impeded 
the march to conquests over error. 

Underneath the form of a verbal religion, there are things new to 
philosophy, new to theology, new to human wisdom, that must be 
brought forth and declared as the central and inspiring truths of God. 
We have been coasting along the shore, content with bays and rivers, 
and picking up a few shells; we must "launch out into the deep," 
where Omnipotence has room for its displays, and where storms turn 
out to be the amusement of an hour. He falls into error, who fancies 
that Religion has expressed itself in every possible form, or that 
Revelation is insusceptible of other interpretations than those predi- 
cated at Nice or framed by Athanasius. 

Revealed religion, as a historic system of moral truths, has ob- 
served the general law of development, being in this respect in per- 
fect harmony with the theory of the universe as a development; 
and under a similar law of evolution it will continue to expand until 
its mission shall be fully accomplished. If we study the evolutionary 
aspects of religion we shall see that it has developed in proportion 
to the intellectual capacity of the race, the light shining more 
brightly as man confessed his need of it, until it burst forth in 
a blaze of supernatural splendor that time has not been able to ex- 
tinguish. "The light brightens," says Newman Smyth, "as the 
world is prepared for its shining." In distinct phrase, Revelation has 
been progressive, not given in a lump, but rather by piece-meal, 
given as a panorama with ever-changing scenes, suited first to child- 
hood, then to manhood, and finally to age. From Abraham to the 
Messiah religion is a clear development under divine auspices of 
monotheistic and Messianic truth, reaching an apparently fixed con- 



THE PROGRESSIVE HISTORY OF RELIGION. 561 

dition in the judicial proclamations of the Master. In the patriarch's 
time how crude every religious idea — an altar, a sacrifice, a 
worshiper? Abraham felt that this was not all of religion, but it 
was the best possible in the primitive condition of society. Whether 
it is said that religion keeps pace with society, or is the pioneer of 
civilization, they seem to occupy contiguous positions, and are 
adapted to each other, all history certifying to their relative interac- 
tion. In primitive times, a primitive religion — in later times an 
advanced religion. From the tabernacle to the temple ; from Elijah's 
musings under the juniper-tree to the full-voiced preaching of Peter 
on Pentecost ; from the angels who saved Lot to those who ministered 
to the tempted Christ ; from Solomon in all his glory to Christ in his 
transfiguration ; from the raising of the Shunammite's son to the resur- 
rection of Lazarus ; from the sacrifice of David on Moriah to that 
of the world's Victim on Calvary ; was a series of advancing steps in 
religious unfolding, of new developments all the way, of changes in 
the very structure, spirit, and design of religion, a complete remodel- 
ing of the old, a final crowning of the new. Until its culmination 
in the great Teacher, religion was in outward appearance as changeful 
as the kaleidoscope, a marvel of surprises, adapting itself to the 
changed conditions of man, and all tending to and preparing the way 
for its final incarnation. Sinai, with its terrific splendors, is a mon- 
umental mile-post in religion ; Carmel, with Elijah's victory, signifies 
another measured advance ; Solomon in Jerusalem, Jonah in Nineveh, 
Daniel in Babylon, each unrolled the scroll which contained secret 
things from the foundation of the world. By its prophets, true and 
false; by its kings, loyal and disloyal; by its phalanx of teachers in 
the motherhood and fatherhood of Israel, religion sent out, as from 
a sun, myriad rays of light, giving the world in a regular order of 
development, monotheism, sacrificial worship, temples, a priesthood, 
songs, incarnation, resurrection, immortality, and judgment; and 
these not as experimental or speculative ideas, but as primary, funda- 
mental, essential facts, teachings and certainties. 

Treating of the progressive method of Revelation, Newman Smyth 
affirms that " the general formative truths of the Old Testament 
were progressive forces in early history," and that they were adapted 
to the moral education of the race. With this thought as a starting- 
point he specifically discloses the "pedagogical intent" of the Judaic 
system and shows a ' ' plain progress of doctrine in the Bible from 
without inward, from external restraints to inward principles, from 
law to love." Waiving the educational purpose of the Judaic admin- 
istration, it is patent to all who examine it that it is a gradually de- 
veloping system of truth, glorious in its advancement, and more 

36 



562 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

glorious in its culmination in the new administration of the Spirit. 
Dr. Smyth sees the educational purpose in the law of sacrifices, and 
the law of the Sabbath, while also he as readily discovers a develop- 
ment of the monotheistic conception, the hope of immortality, and 
the idea of atonement. In his view the development of revelation is 
a development within limitations ; not all of truth has been revealed ; 
not too much or too little, but enough for pedagogical and proba- 
tionary purposes. 

Agreeing that Revelation is circumscribed by limitation, it must 
be remembered that mankind in their discoveries, researches, and in- 
terpretations, have not reached the limits. Much of Revelation is 
still unknown ; it is an undiscovered and an undeveloped region. As 
there is a development within limitations, so should there be a develop- 
ment as far as limitation. But even the limits are unknown. While 
religious truth grows larger under development, and requires two dis- 
pensations to exhibit it fully, Christianity must not be regarded as a 
mere development. The development of truth is the process of its 
unfolding ; truth itself is more than the process, it is not in its nature 
a development. It is a revelation, and development is a method of rev- 
elation. It is a supernatural thing unfolding by a particular method, 
which must ever be distinguished from the thing itself. 

As Christianity appears in the Bible in larger forms or newer 
types as it is developed, so in its historical growth it has passed 
through a variety of forms, the more prominent of which are Gnos- 
ticism, Mysticism, Roman Catholicism, Oriental Sectarianism, and 
Protestantism, each a progressive type, each just what might be ex- 
pected of a religion in process of unfolding. Biblically, Christianity 
developed from obscurity toward transparency, or from a few to many 
truths ; historically, it has been affected by its environment, absorb- 
ing errors, and suffering therefrom, so that its development, as 
spiritual truth, has been impeded by the compromising presence of 
false interpretations and interpolated doctrines. In this error-impress- 
ing form or Christianity obscured by theological interpretations, it 
stands out before the world at the present time, misunderstood from 
necessity, and sometimes rejected because it seems irreconcilable with 
itself. The next advance must be a development from error toward 
truth, its independence from the creed-maker, and an exact por- 
traiture of its legitimate character. Just as truth is developed in the 
Scriptures, so must it be developed in history and in practical life. 

Has religion lost its progressive character? Has it reached its 
growth ? Has its development been arrested, and are we shut up to 
the familiar forms of truth, the tabulated series of doctrines, and to 
a revelation marked by distinct limitations clearly pointed out by the 



THE NEW IN THE OLD. 563 

theologians ? Or will development go on as long as man develops ? 
Will it progress as he progresses ? To suppose otherwise implies a 
misunderstanding both of man and religion, for both as they appear 
to us are undeveloped, a long future being required to fully mature 
the one and unfold the other. 

In what respect will religion appear new? However ancient in 
form, it will always exhibit new phases in the developments of Chris- 
tianity, producing advanced conditions of society, satisfying the most 
complex aspiration for truth, and even ministering to that devout 
curiosity which sometimes casts its innocent spell over believing and 
inquiring souls. Down in the old is the quiet, sleeping spirit of the new. 
It is a palpable error into which many fall, that the old truths of re- 
ligion are fully understood, and that their power has been fully tested, 
and that a definite conclusion as to their value may be pronounced. 
The conceited advocate sometimes deludes himself with the belief that 
because he is familiar with certain truths, or rather with the manner 
in which they are uttered, he is also familiar with their nature, he 
knows their origin, and is capable of answering any question respect- 
ing them, when a little examination would convince him that he 
really knows nothing about them. The sage of Athens inhaled the 
atmosphere, but knew nothing of oxygen — not any more, at least, 
than the insect that floated over the Acropolis. The Norwegian 
slaked his thirst with water, and dipped his oar in the cold stream, 
but was ignorant of the latent force of steam. In the days of Queen 
Elizabeth lightning flashed in every storm, as it did in the later day 
of Morse, but what did she know of the power of electricity ? Who 
knew that sunlight would stamp the picture of a face upon glass, or 
a metallic plate, until Daguerre said so? How long were mankind 
familiar with water, light, air, gravitation, cystallization, chemical 
affinity, polarization, yet knew nothing about them, were ignorant of 
the forces and possibilities in them ! How much of nature still re- 
mains incognito! Who declaims on the uses of the thistle, or the 
beauty of the dandelion, or the virtue of dogberry? Yet there lurks 
in every poison a medicine, in every fruit a food, in the most worth- 
less member of the vegetable kingdom a specific use, and all nature 
is but a store-house of beauties, uses, virtues, and forces that must 
have final recognition, application, and relation to civilization. 

May it not be so with respect to higher things ? May it not be 
that, as new powers and new laws were found in, or in association 
with, the old forms of matter with which men were long familiar, so 
in the oldest forms of religion, especially in Christianity, may be 
found new truths, new moral distinctions, new ethical forces, and new 
spiritual possibilities, not suspected even by those who live within the 



564 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

shadow of altars, and are acquainted with the historic forms of re- 
ligion ? That the new is in the old we are fully persuaded, and that 
Christianity, as taught and understood and applied, is still a folded 
germ, ready to sprout and grow under congenial conditions into some- 
thing different from what it is, we must believe. Is any one ready 
to assert that the great problems of inspiration, prophecy, miracle, 
regeneration, spiritual dynamics, incarnation, Providence, and immor- 
tality, have received adequate treatment at the hands of the Christian 
teacher, or are competently explained, or have been exhibited in their 
true character and in all their relations ? So long as Paul's cloak (II 
Timothy, iv, 13) is considered inconsistent with inspiration ; so long 
as Jonah's prophecy concerning the downfall of Nineveh is quoted 
against the infallibility of prophecy ; so long as Pentecostal influence 
is interpreted as moral enthusiasm generated by a moral purpose in 
human hearts ; so long as miracle is reduced to legerdemain ; so long 
as immortality is poetized as a dream, or a doubt, or a perhaps, or a 
possibility, there will be need of re-investigation, yea, deeper investi- 
gation, of the commonest bulwarks of our holy religion. 

A great question like that of the government of the world, or all 
that is involved in providence; a great duty like that of prayer, or 
all that is involved in fellowship with God ; a great doctrine like that 
of regeneration, or all that is involved in relationship to God ; a great 
fact like depravity, or heredity, or all that is involved in the lapses 
of human history ; and a great hope like that of atonement, resurrec- 
tion, and immortality, or all that is involved in human destiny, can 
not be wrapped in superstition, or given out in fragmentary form, or 
settled by incomplete statement, or passed over with apologetic silence. 
"More light" is reason's cry; "more light" is the heart's agony. 
The solution of these questions is in the truth given ; the light is in 
the darkness ; the new is in the old. 

In these oldest questions the newest discoveries must yet be made. 
We say nothing of schools of theology, with their conflicting inter- 
pretations ; nothing of private and speculative beliefs in outside 
circles ; nothing of skepticism touching religion in general ; but, so 
long as religion itself as a system of truth is a complex inconsistency, 
or an architectural absurdity, or its disciples are ignorant of the na- 
ture of the truths that enter into its composition, there will be the 
necessity for repeated exploration, adoption of new definitions, and 
ventures on higher achievements. 

It is significant that the Bible is composed of an Old Testament, 
embracing the old laws, old forms of worship, the old spirit, and a 
New Testament, breathing a new spirit into the world, presenting a 
new character, a new model, a new worship, and a new life to men. 



THE CENTRAL FIGURE UNINTERPRETED. 565 

It is the pledge of the new in Christianity, or, rather, that Chris- 
tianity is the new in religion, and will forever remain so. Of all 
that is obscure in religion, taxing human wisdom beyond its ability 
to interpret correctly, is the great Personage who is its inspiration, 
and who is the center of Christianity — Jesus Christ. Understand him, 
and miracle, spiritual energy, and immortal existence, have an easy 
explanation. Christianity is illuminated in the person of its Founder, 
and is obscure only as he is enigmatical. Who fully comprehends 
him? Have not all read of his incarnate birth, his benevolent 
deeds, his marvelous life, his elevation upon the cross, and his resur- 
rection from the dead? Yet the realities of his history rise like 
mountains that have never been scaled; his words are more than 
Austerlitz battles that shake errors to their foundations ; his deeds 
more than the thunderbolts of a brigade of gods, yet few there 
be who comprehend their import. Who has grasped all there is of 
that character ? Who has found the key to the supernatural in him ? 
Who has touched the umbilical cord that connects the human with 
the divine and makes him what he is? The tremendous fact is that 
Jesus Christ is yet the newest character of history, possessed of ele- 
ments never yet analyzed, exerting a power never yet comprehended, 
planning a purpose appalling to genius, and accomplishing an end 
that, when understood, will link his fame to the stars. After eighteen 
centuries of study, comparison, and inquiry, mankind see in him a 
grandeur that words can not express, and a loftiness that human 
wisdom can not measure. The great central figure of Christianity is 
still an uninterpreted or a misinterpreted character, obscure because 
sublime, distant from the human sphere because divine. 

Now, it must not be assumed that religious problems, from their 
very nature, must remain unsolved, and that Christ, from his nature, 
must be out of human reach — this is an indirect apology for our ig- 
norance. A reverent spirit must acknowledge the limitations of finite 
knowledge, but these limitations may be artificial, the result of 
moral infirmity, to be removed so soon as man's disability is over- 
come. Christianity is more than a moral influence; it is an 
intellectual force. In it is the secret of holiness, and the key to 
knowledge, and under its inspiration all mysteries should dissolve, all 
questions should be answered, all doubts be overthrown, and mankind 
know the truth as it is revealed in Christ. Christianity is divine 
wisdom ; and, studied, comprehended, known, all problems will 
have an adequate solution. Hence, in the old of Christianity is the 
new of religion — new solutions, new principles, new powers, new 
certainties. 

Christianity is the representative term of the occult in the spiritual 



566 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

sphere, the sign-word of mysteries of a very high and complex order. Among 
the Greeks the Eleusinian mysteries, half religious and half philosoph- 
ical, involved more properly the processes of vegetation, and the deifi- 
cation of nature's powers and methods. The Greek disciple confined 
his study to the material. The disciple of Christianity has a wider 
field, and begins at a higher altitude. Indeed, the material is not at 
all to be explained by the material. Nature will not explain itself, and 
a deification of nature's energies removes the problem to the back- 
ground without throwing any light upon it. Mysteries abound both 
in nature and in that which is above nature, and a religion, sinking 
its roots deep in the one or the other, or in both, as Christianity does, 
will necessarily present a mysterious side to the world. Mystery is 
the scientific side of nature ; much more the philosophical side of re- 
ligion. Kobert Hall has said that " a. revelation without mystery is a 
temple without a god." The sky has its milky way; Christianity; 
its constellations of surpassing beauty. If it is the province of 
religion to deal with fundamental or primary truths, then must it 
deal with things hard to be understood, and even revelation itself 
may need interpretation or a hyper-revelation. But a religion that 
would reject the supernatural and confine itself to the natural would 
not be a religion at all ; it might be philosophy, but nothing more. 
The essence of a comprehending religion is the supernatural, as the 
essence of philosophy is the natural. From the one to the other is the 
distance from the tangible to the intangible, from the seen to the 
unseen. By virtue of its remoteness, its intangibility, its eternal per- 
spective, the supernatural is a cloud-land, mapped off only in outline, 
with the great landscapes of truth intervening, unexplored, undefined, 
and unknown ; and the more of the supernatural in religion, the 
larger its mysteries and the more numerous its problems. 

Now, it is in keeping with fact to assert that Christianity is the 
only religion that has joined itself completely to the supernatural ; 
or, being still more exact, that out of the supernatural has issued but 
one religion, namely, Christianity. It has attempted a materializa- 
tion of itself in the religion of the New Testament, through the great 
Teacher, and in the many-voiced truths of the entire volume. As a 
consequence Christianity partakes of the mystery of the supernatural, 
and is an open field for the discovery of new forms of truth. Possi- 
bly, within the circle of the supernatural, there are truths concerning 
which the human mind must forever remain in ignorance, or know 
them imperfectly at best ; and yet of this we are not quite certain. 
At all events the supernatural is as legitimate a field for inquiry and 
exploration as the psychological, biological, chemical, and physiolog- 
ical, and must yield some of its contents as it is invaded and in- 



THE PARABLE OF THE SUPERNATURAL, 567 

spected. If there is a supernatural at all, it can not be fenced from 
observation or buried out of sight. Especially may the minor mys- 
teries, the superficial truths of Christianity, be explored throughout 
their borders, and be relieved of any superstitious complexion piety 
may have given them. The Master was continually teaching truths 
in parables, astonishing the Jews, and purposely throwing over them 
the veil of obscurity, yet to the disciples they were made transparent ; 
and when asked why he spoke in parables the Master replied, " Unto 
you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God," but not 
" unto them that are without," implying that the key to knowledge 
is discipleship. Christianity is the parable of the supernatural, to be in- 
terpreted by and through the experience of discipleship, and to be revealed 
in proportion to the spiritual capacity of the recipient. Intimacy 
with the supernatural, acquaintance with the profound truths of God, 
is a part of the programme by which spiritual mysteries may be resolved 
into realities. We do not, therefore, concede the necessary obscurity of 
the spiritual, for, as Audubon drew birds to his hand, so the spiritual 
mind will draw the supernatural to itself, extract its meaning, measure 
its power, compass its relations to time and space, and discern the 
eternity of things supernatural. 

Spiritual knowledge, or an advance into the supernatural, is as 
possible as it is imperative ; an opening in the clouds and a discern- 
ment of what is beyond, or an upheaval of truth, freed from gross- 
ness, and transparent as light, may be expected, as the ages come 
and go. Is the soul forever to remain a mystery ? Is the ego, self- 
conscious, to be self-ignorant ? The inside must be as visible as the 
outside, spirit must be comprehended as well as matter, as the condi- 
tion of comprehending the significance of the divine utterances respect- 
ing immortality and the future life. Science is the material phase 
of world-life ; religion is the spiritual phase. Shall one reveal its 
secrets and the other withhold them ? Shall physiology be triumph- 
ant, and psychology confess defeat ? Soul-life must reveal itself, or 
be revealed by religion. 

Atoning influence is a theological mystery, which must succumb 
to the reverent inquiry of souls, steeped in love divine ; and, as its 
power is understood, so will it be coveted and appropriated. It is 
not difficult to show that the idea of atonement is not inconsistent 
with nature, or with the universal order of things, for nature is an 
atoning system ; and if the basis of nature and religion is atonement, 
it may be preached without prejudice. More than an agreement, 
however, between the truths of Christianity and the facts of nature 
must be pointed out ; for the method by which religious truth is ap- 
plied to men is not always paralleled by the course of nature. The 



568 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

fact of atonement has its vindication in nature ; the application of 
atonement stands unrepresented in nature. Here is need of a new 
revelation, or a new discovery. 

The doctrine of the resurrection, comforting as it is understood, 
but absurd as it is sometimes taught, needs to be redeemed from 
vagueness and crudeness, and clothed with celestial charms, while the 
hope of immortality must be transformed in the presence of faith into 
a certainty of the future. 

The greatest mystery of religion is God. Inaccessible, invisible, 
yet omnipresent and all-loving, it is the world's anxiety to know 
more about him, and, according to the Scriptures, it is God's anxiety 
to be fully known. This double anxiety will eventuate in new rev- 
elations of God, the shadows of the Infinite being succeeded by the 
open presence of the Everlasting Substance in the world. This ad- 
ditional light, however, will not dawn through the medium of a new 
Bible, but by the illumination of existing truth through human re- 
search and divine agency, or the mutual approach of God and man 
in the devout study of the Word. 

With progress in these directions, all other subjects will receive 
elucidation ; angelic life will no longer be dark and impenetrable ; 
miraculous force will be seen to be spiritual, not material ; regenerat- 
ing force will be recognized as superhuman, not natural ; iuspiration 
will appear as a supernatural influence ; providence will be inter- 
preted as the personal supervision of the supernatural; prayer will 
be esteemed a supernatural instrument, and man will make the nat- 
ural his foot-stool and the supernatural his dwelling-place. 

The revelation of the supernatural through intellectual sympathy, 
and by contact with spiritual sources of truth, belongs to the possibil- 
ities of religion. The order of revelation and advancement will be 
gradual and rapid — rapid enough to startle the world out of its leth- 
argy, and graduated according to the receptivity and sympathy of 
the race. 

Progress in religion, or development in spiritual knowledge, may 
be at the expense of old-time beliefs, and involve the sacrifice of cer- 
tain creed-forms of truth ; but the eager, truth-seeking mind, unfet- 
tered by antiquity, authority, or forms, alone will find the new 
contents of Christianity. The investigator must not be a bondman, 
except to truth already known. For him aspiration is inspiration, 
and let him fly with the freedom of God. 

Conquest in the highest sphere will be followed by achievement in 
the lower ; that is, the supernatural, not only vindicated, but also 
disclosed, exposed, and explained, the natural will yield up its con- 
tents, and declare mystery to be a fable of the past. The realm of 



THE THREAD OF THESEUS. 569 

Greek thought was the material; even the gods, according to the 
Greek, were natural forces deified. To his mind the spiritual is in 
an eternal eclipse. In our day the supernatural is the chief factor 
at bottom of every thing, explanatory of all existence, the secret of 
all force, the ultimatum of transcendentalism no less than Christianity. 
■Deriving all things by a true Christian philosophy from the om- 
nipotence of the supernatural, the solution of the mystery of the 
physical universe, not yet wrought out, must soon be proposed. 
What with Moses, and the nebular hypothesis and evolution, and the 
spectroscope, and a thousand other sources of knowledge yet to be 
opened, the mystery of the creative art will be disclosed, and the fiat 
of the Almighty will have its sublime vindication, not alone in the 
sincerity of a cherished faith, but in the results of scientific and re- 
ligious achievement. How far Christianity may contribute to the 
discovery of the secret of the physical universe ; whether the Biblical 
writers furnish any clue to the origin of things or their final des- 
tiny; whether cosmical systems, physical laws, mathematical facts, 
scientific orders are foreshadowed to any degree in Revelation ; or 
whether the Book is exclusively a revelation of spiritual truth, car- 
rying along in its stream of light not one grain of physical dust, are 
questions that have been discussed by all schools of thinkers with 
varying opinions and conclusions. The one opinion that the Bible is 
a revelation of scientific truth is as untenable an extreme as the 
other, that it is entirely barren of such truth. One looks in vain 
for zoology, botany, chemistry, biology, psychology, physiology, me- 
teorology, and the other sciences as such in the Book ; for that mat- 
ter, it is a question if certain theologies may be found there ; but there 
are scientific intimations, scattered through the Book, which have a. 
certain value, and possibly, like Theseus's thread, may lead the savants 
out*of Dsedalus's labyrinth of difficulties into the open fields of knowl- 
edge and safety. Some stress must be placed upon these scientific 
allusions, as little things have been the preludes to great discoveries. 
A piece of glass suggested the telescope ; a falling apple pointed to 
the law of gravitation ; Franklin's kite taught the tamableness of 
lightning; the boiling tea-kettle was the forerunner of the steamship 
and locomotive. A partial or obscure revelation of scientific facts 
is consistent with a full revelation of spiritual truths ; and the Bible 
is made up after this fashion, containing scientific hints, not even 
yet fully discerned, and revealing great spiritual truths, not yet ade- 
quately realized. Is the earth globular? So recent science has 
demonstrated, but Isaiah, twenty-three centuries ago, spoke of " the 
circle of the earth " — a scientific hint of its sphericity that science 
has been slow to recognize, but which it has at last accepted as 



570 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

prophetically true. Has air weight ? Torricelli established that fact, 
but long before his day Job announced that God made "the weight 
for the winds" — another scientific hint that slept for ages, waiting 
for confirmation by discovery. Of the ancient theories concerning 
the earth one was that it is a plain, another that it is a triangle, 
another that it is a seven-storied house, another that it rests on 
the back of a tortoise ; no intelligible, and certainly no correct, view 
of its place in the planetary system being taken. But Job, quite as 
astronomical in vision as Herschel by study, proclaimed that God 
"hangeth the earth upon nothing," relieving it of gross relations, and 
suggesting the reign of an invisible law in the universe of worlds. 
What shall be said of Moses, whose cosmogony, chronology, and 
scientific order of the creative processes and results have occasioned 
more investigation than Darwinism or any modern scientific propo- 
sition ? Is Moses in error touching any point ? Archbishop 
Usher's chronology, long acccepted by the Church, conveys the im- 
pression that Moses taught that the earth was created six thousand 
years ago; but it is found that, according to Moses, the creation of 
the earth occurred "in the beginning," which may mean millions of 
years ago thus harmonizing with the most radical conjectures of geolo- 
gists. Does geology establish the order of creation by the strata of the 
earth's crust? That order is Mosaic throughout. Likewise the 
astronomy of Moses, in its intent if not in its terms, is strictly scien- 
tific, and a key to a correct astronomy and geology. Time demon- 
strates Moses to the letter. This is all the more striking, since the 
scientific teaching of the days of Moses was at variance with all mod- 
ern conclusions, and since modern science itself turns out to be lame 
only where it is contrary to Moses, Job, and Isaiah. Respecting 
the destiny of the globe Peter especially declares that it shall suffer 
conflagration and be reduced to a cinder, and, corroborating this 
possibility, science has already shown that the earth in its gases and 
solids is one vast combustible store-house, ready for the match of the 
world's destroyer. Surely Christianity has something to offer to the 
consideration of thinking men besides spiritual truths; it is a scientific 
hint-book, a key to science, the study of which will lead to scien- 
tific truth. 

This obviates the objection made to its scientific character, that a 
revelation of physical facts, laws, and systems, will prevent research, 
that man, ever prone to intellectual inertia, will not examine, in- 
quire, search for laws and orders if they are revealed to him, for the 
scientific allusions in the Bible are incomplete revelations; they are 
hints only, keys, fore-glimpses requiring searching and examining 
just as much as if they were not there. 



SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION OF BIBLE WRITERS. 571 

It is sometimes alleged that the scientific language of the Bible 
is unscientific, but this grows out of the fact that the nomenclature 
of Bible times was not scientific, and that inspiration employed lan- 
guage that could be understood by the people to whom it was ad- 
dressed ; and, further, English translators have been as careless in 
their work as the Jews were incorrect in their conceptions. In order 
to eliminate the scientific spirit of Christianity from Revelation — a 
task undertaken to accommodate the querulous spirit of material- 
ism — Dr. J. H. Mcllvaine insists that the Hebrew writers were 
totally uninformed in .science, and that the Bible, therefore, is unre- 
liable in its scientific allusions and statements. He holds that the 
geocentric system of the physical universe is fairly maintained in the 
Bible; that the sacred writers "conceived of the earth as a solid, im- 
movable body, with a plane or perhaps a slightly convex surface ;" 
that, in their minds, the sky was likewise a "solid substance;" that 
also above the firmament or solid sky there was a great body of water, 
from which rains descended, just as under the earth there are waters 
from which issue springs, rivers, and wells; that in small zoological 
matters Moses is in error, as when he speaks of the coney and hare 
as ruminants when they are rodents; and thus he lays the founda- 
tion for a suspicious attack on the scientific elements of revealed re- 
ligion. To this it may be replied that, as has been shown, the 
scientific allusions to the air's weight, the sphericity of the earth, and 
the chronology of the earth's creation, are precisely and scientifically 
correct; that, while the Bible writers may have not been learned 
scientists, and spoke in an uninspired way, just as the people would 
speak, yet, when they wrote a scientific hint by inspiration, it was 
infallibly reliable; that these same Bible writers must not be loaded 
down with the errors of translators ; that our inferences of the knowl- 
edge of the Bible writers may not be sufficiently supported by the 
facts ; and that apologies for the supposed deficiencies in scientific 
knowledge of the sacred writers not only discredit the scientific 
spirit of the book, but the entire book, for it at once compels a dis- 
crimination between the scientific and spiritual, which the majority 
of mankind will not undertake to make. The overthrow of the scien- 
tific in Christianity opens the gate to the invaders of the spiritual in 
Christianity. 

Superficial reviewers of the scientific revelations of the Bible reach 
unfavorable conclusions ; but a close student of the same will be sur- 
prised at certain underlying facts or principles, fundamental to the 
Bible, and distinguishing it from all other pretended religious docu- 
ments and revelations. The absence of mythological conceptions, and 
of religious and scientific myths, prevalent in the early ages, from 



572 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the Pentateuch, is a remarkable fact, to be accounted for on no other 
ground than inspiration. Why no gods, no myths, no centaurs, no 
half-human and half-animal creatures in Genesis ? The earth comes 
from the hand of a Creator, a personal Being, not from gods; and 
is peopled, not with gods, or half-human creatures, but with animals 
and men. The science of Genesis is not mythological. 

Again, the " optical accuracy" of the Old Testament writers is an 
unmistakable evidence of the scientific verity of the Bible. Newman 
Smyth and Prof. Dawson employ this fact in support of the scientific 
virtue of Christianity, insisting that, with few exceptions, the scien- 
tific references, if taken literally, have been or will be confirmed by 
modern investigation. The first chapter of Genesis Dr. Smyth calls 
a "religious and scientific primer," or, as we term it, a pedagogical 
manual of creation, revealing in narrative form the creative process, 
or world-building by development. 

Creation was not an instantaneous act, but a development, even 
according to Moses. The theory of development originated with 
Moses, from whom Darwin borrowed it. Dr. Smyth assumes that the 
alphabet of science is in revelation. So we believe. 

If, then, Christianity is accepted as a scientific hint, what new dis- 
coveries may yet be made in the regions of matter under the pilot- 
age of religion ! The faith is thrilling that religion may yet be the 
torch, not alone through the spiritual realm, but for the guidance of 
the explorers throughout the visible universe. The modern spirit is 
opposed to such guidance ; the lines between religion and science are 
being carefully drawn, the light of one being considered useless in 
the other; but it remains, and will forever remain, that true science 
is the auxiliary of religion, and true religion is the auxiliary of science. 
The cessation of conflict between them is not in their separation, as 
has been proclaimed, but in their unity; not in their divorce, but in 
their marriage. If truth has two faces, the one is spiritual and the 
other physical; they do not contradict; they are not in opposition; 
they look in the same direction ; they may boast of the same divine line- 
age ; they are one. Like parallel lines, they run along side by side ; 
only the physical must end, while the spiritual must go on forever. 

In still another realm the new in Christianity will have demon- 
stration. Its profoundest effect will be on exhibition in man, and to 
man must one look to discover its possibility. Christianity, in ex- 
panding forms of truth, in the application of its oldest teachings to 
social conditions, in the flood-tide of light it pours upon supernatural- 
ism, and in its graduated disposition of physical problems, will ever 
claim attention; but its greatest work will be on man himself. 
Christianity is for man, his enlightenment in duty, his understanding 



THE SUMMUM BONUM OF CHRISTIANITY. 573 

of truth, the molding of his character into a divine likeness, the de- 
velopment of his moral possibilities into genuine qualities, the reclama- 
tion of the waste of the soul by the fertilizing processes of the Holy 
Spirit, the impartation of immortal energy to his awakened powers, 
his establishment on a fixed moral basis, and the security of his future 
beyond the fear of loss by apostasy. 

All truth is for man, to make him what he ought to be, what he 
can be, to make him a new man, and, therefore, a new subject for 
his own contemplation. In its ordered operations religion works by 
different methods, producing results somewhat uniform in appearance, 
but with marked diversity in the underlying stratum of soul-life. 
To all the same Spirit is given, but there are manifold operations 
productive of manifold results, bearing a common likeness, and yet 
exhibiting a distinct functional end or object. To one, Paul says, is 
given the word of wisdom ; to another, faith ; to another, the working 
of miracles ; to another, prophecy ; to another, discerning of spirits. 
It is the self-same Spirit that worketh in all, but the products are 
distinct, and original in certain moral peculiarities. By this process 
Christianity is precipitating upon the world new men and women, 
lifting them above the common level of others, endowing them with 
new and unanticipated functions, and inspiriting them with a new 
and divine mission. We are too slow in perceiving the outcome of 
the religious operation, too dull in inquiring into the nature of the 
regenerating accomplishment, and permit the Christian to pass before 
us almost unnoticed when he carries in his soul the new design of 
the Master's workmanship, even the ideal of God respecting man. 
We pause over the conversion of Paul, so dramatic in its scenes ; we 
read with vivid interest the life-work of George Muller, or Madame 
Guyon, or Fletcher, or Zwingli, the principal feature of which is the 
divine halo that encircles it; but forget that in the converted miner, 
or in the evangelized Creole, or in the reorganized neighbor, there has 
been felt the moral power of the universe, and that whoever is con- 
verted is a "new creature." By the mouth of Ezekiel the Lord 
promised to " put a new spirit within" man ; and, according to Paul, 
such a man is new ; new, in the sense that he is different from his 
former self, and new in that he is different from others. Not new 
truths alone then, not new forms of religion, not new developments 
of supernaturalism, not new explanations of physical facts, will alone 
issue from and through Christianity ; but new men, in whom religion 
will have its brightest displays, and exhibit the extreme of its power. 
The fact of creation is in matter; the doctrine of providence is in 
events ; the summum bonum of Christianity is in man. 

If Christianity is the source or fund of things new as well as old, 



574 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

it is evident that a pursuit of the new is legitimate ; if the new is 
necessary to the completion and development of the old, it is clear 
that a knowledge of the new is essential. What is it that stimulates 
discovery, exploration, invention, like the hope of finding something 
hitherto unknown ? Over the old half-truths, disordered facts, con- 
flicting principles, ideas, and achievements, the sluggish world falls 
asleep, and is only aroused by necessity or inspiration. Given some 
new field of research, a prospect of overthrowing an error, or estab- 
lishing the truth, a hint of new methods, new systems, new laws, new 
forces, a supposition that more lies beyond and can be found, and 
men will toil and sacrifice, suffer and die, in their searchings and 
achievements. A new asteroid thrills every astronomer; a new flower 
charms the botanist ; the north pole draws the navigator ; a new dis- 
covery in physics leads to multiplied inventions; and a new law 
sometimes changes the face of civilization. If in all departments of 
life — physics, science, history, social movements — the quickening in- 
fluence of the new is felt, and operates as a stimulating motive, what 
must be its effect in the higher spheres of knowledge and research ? 
Indeed, should we not expect that it would conduct to greater ven- 
tures, and inspire to the greatest possible intellectual stretches in 
fields practically illimitable, and where the results are so intimately 
blended with man's noblest well-being and destiny? In this view 
Christianity, with its prophetic new truths, is the religion of inspiration, 
not alone "given by inspiration," but prompting the intellectual en- 
ergies of man to endeavors, inquiries, and attainments impossible 
without it. 

Again, the observing student is profoundly impressed with the in- 
coherent teachings of philosophy, science, and external religion, con- 
cerning fundamental religious truths ; in other words, a conflict of 
ideas is raging over these truths. What is truth ? may well be asked. 
The antagonism of conflicting systems has resulted in agnosticism, as 
fatal to religion as skepticism and atheism combined. Disagreement 
concerning truths is proof that all of truth has not been obtained, 
and unity is impossible except as new truth, or the remainder of 
truth, is sought and found. What shall reconcile science and relig- 
ion? More truth, we answer, which means new truth. What shall 
reconcile philosophy and religion? More truth. What shall recon- 
cile Christianity and Mohammedanism ? More truth. The cure for 
difference is truth — new truth. On truths as now known, whether 
speculative as in philosophy, fragmentary as in science, superstitious 
as in religion, unity between conflicting systems is out of the question. 
On old truths conflict is as inevitable in the future as it is now. On 
the new in all departments of knowledge, as a basis of unity, sciences, 



RELIGION AN UNDEVELOPED GIANT. 575 

philosophies, and religions will approach for conference, negotiation, 
and the establishment of friendly relations. It can not be otherwise. 
Old truth is insufficient, as a basis of unity, because of its incom- 
pleteness ; new truth, embracing all there is to be known, removing 
the shadows from the contents of revelation, and bringing forward 
the supernatural in right relations to the natural, must be sufficient 
as a basis of unity for science, philosophy, and religion. Christianity 
is, therefore, the bond of unity among the irreconcilable so-called 
truths of religion, science, and philosophy. 

Another fact must not be omitted in these calculations. Chris- 
tianity is not exerting its full working power ; its resources, especially 
its reserve forces, are not employed in redeeming the world. It is 
not true that it is accomplishing its purpose, with its mysteries still 
mysterious, with the world ignorant of what is in it, with its greatest 
truths slumbering within reach of man. Religion is an undeveloped 
giant, and is working with the disadvantages of infancy. Perhaps, 
with these drawbacks, it will finally be able to save the world, but 
all must agree that under the present methods redemption is a slow 
process, and the highest efficiency of Christianity is yet to be demon- 
strated. Christianity is redemptive in its aim, redemptive in its 
work, redemptive in its spirit; but an unworked Christianity will not 
redeem any thing. Its past is a history of redemption, of the shak- 
ing of the nations by its power, as in the time of Constantine, and 
then of a long lapse into darkness and barbarism ; of revival again 
and reverses, of controversy, antagonism, uncertainty, and infidelity ; 
meanwhile the world slowly rising because of its undergirding by re- 
ligion. In spite of fanaticism, superstition, and great misunderstand- 
ings; in spite of theological differences and false interpretations of 
doctrine, Christianity is a saving power ; it is the instrument of re- 
demption, and has demonstrated its capacity for conquest. The in- 
ternal weights removed, the differences canceled in the unity of 
knowledge, and Christianity apprehended in its length, depth, and 
breadth, all the sooner will its world-wide and exceptional task be 
accomplished. The new in Christianity, as the source of internal 
unity, is indispensable to the largest and speediest success. 

To the acquisition of the new, however, there are obstacles steadily 
persistent in their assertion, and penalties that threaten every pursuer 
after that which is hidden from the common observation. Forward 
movements in religious thought are too much under ban, and pro- 
hibition of a new idea has been carried to an extreme. The new in 
Christianity will not be the product of another revelation, but of 
illumination of the revelation given. The new is at hand ; it is here in 
Revelation, to be sought out and proclaimed by those who have a 



576 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

genius for finding things, and who are under a promised inspiration 
in search of truth ; it is within reach of the mind that is in Christ. 
Through the faith that overcometh all things, there may be progress 
in the acquisition of spiritual knowledge such as has not been antici- 
pated. Not through a new revelation, therefore, is the new to be 
had, but through new labors, guided by the divine Spirit, and ex- 
pended on the rough material of the old. 

To this kind of effort there is the obstacle of an innocent sectarian- 
ism, which forbids a change of base, or a new formula of belief, in 
the fear that the whole superstructure will fall if a single stone be 
removed. The prejudice that attaches to one form of truth is the 
root of a vigorous defense of it, and, so far, so good ; but it is in the 
way of a broad vision, and militates against enlargement. Education, 
ancestral influence, the utterances of creeds, and the strength of 
Christian organizations, oppose any very liberal inquiry in new direc- 
tions, as unnecessary, speculative, and injurious; and earnest souls 
step cautiously, and walk, like the gods, with feet shod with wool. 
Excommunication is sometimes the result of too much boldness in 
attempted discovery. Over a peccadillo in expression, a conflict has 
ensued, that has resulted in estrangement of advocate and opponent, 
and almost rent the respective organizations to which they belonged. 
The cry of heresy has sounded in the ear of the independent investi- 
gator, fettering his movements, padlocking his speech, and severing 
his ecclesiastical relations : yet, in spite of derision, he has modestly 
gone on in his work for the truth. Nor can it be said that Roman 
Catholicism is alone guilty in this respect ; for our beloved Protestant- 
ism has its spies, heresy hunters, and defenders of the old faiths, inno- 
cent souls who mean to contend for the truth as it has been delivered 
to them. However righteous the opposition to error, and justifiable 
the proclamations of truth in the narrowest aspects, it is apparent 
that ignorance, prejudice, passion, sectarianism, and superstition, 
rather impede than assist in discovery and interpretation. 

Even more obstructive than these is that spirit of contentment 
with revealed truth as a mysterious system which has cast its spell over 
Christendom, disturbed only now and then by an attempt to shake it 
off. The many seem unaware that the word mystery is a reproach ; 
and, blindly accepting the leadership of those as confirmed in the 
faith as themselves, they dream of no increase of knowledge, and are 
ready to frown upon any masculine attempt to resist the reign of 
mystery. The enchantment of ignorance must be broken, the spell 
of satisfaction must be disturbed, and Christian spirits must have 
the right of way into obscurity, darkness, and speculation, that they 
may overshadow it with light and victory. As David, when trans- 



TRADITIONS AND CERTAINTIES. 577 

porting the ark of God from Kirjath-jearira, set it upon a new cart, 
so Christianity may ride on new wheels, over new roads, into new 
regions, causing the race to shout over its new revelations, and rejoice 
in its brighter achievements. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE ESCHATOLOGY OK CHRISTIANITY. 

WR. ALGER says: "The Hereafter is the image flung by the 
. Now. Heaven and hell are the upward and downward echoes 
of the earth." Rivaling Elijah's translation, is the Greek account 
of the destiny of Empedocles, who, " after a sacred festival, was 
drawn up to heaven in a splendor of celestial effulgence." According 
to the New Zealanders, the souls of nobles are immortal, but the 
Cookees perish utterly. To the Indians of the Oronoco, the Great 
Spirit, on his departure from them, said, "Ye shall never die, but 
shall shed your skins." A philosopher once reported: " Strange that 
the barrel-organ, man, should terminate every tune with the strain 
of immortality !" Another thinker says, " The very nerves and sinews 
of religion is hope of immortality." 

That there is a future life for man, is a concession, if not an 
affirmation, of all mythologies, superstitions, and religions. Without 
inquiring into the origin of the universal conviction, it is important 
to study it as one of the cherished hopes of humanity — what it really 
means, what it excludes and includes, and what is its philosophic and 
theologic value. The range of the problem is quite as extensive as 
any in theology or philosophy, and quite as embarrassing as any, if 
studied only philosophically, historically, or even religiously. The 
whole field of eschatology is cloudy, distant, and unspeakably mys- 
terious. Of beliefs, traditions, concessions, guesses, hopes, there are 
an abundance ; of facts, experiences, probabilities, certainties, the 
number is much less. Profound is our embarrassment, since our in- 
dividual interests, as well as those of the race, are involved in it. As 
to the creative process, as to the essence of being, as to the nature 
of matter, as to the destiny of matter, we may waive the desire for 
knowledge ; for, desirable as such knowledge may be, it is not so im- 
portant that we everlastingly perish without it. This is true of the 
majority of problems, both in religion and philosophy. Personal in- 
terests are not at stake in our knowledge of chemical affinity, 
or gravitation, or the ecliptic, or in the questions why Jupiter is 

37 



578 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

attended with moons, and Saturn is enveloped with belts ; but they are 
promoted or damaged, as the eschatological outlook is definite or 
vague, positive or ambiguous, authoritative or conjectural. The 
future ! the future ! is the cry of every earnest spirit, the hope of 
every honest mind. To be or not to be hereafter, is of more value 
than to be or not to be here ; the Hereafter is of more consequence than 
the Here. 

Faith, anxious with desire, and pathetic with hope, is intoxicated 
with delight whenever she remembers that no religion, however de- 
based or ignorant, has ever stared vacantly and blindly into the future. 
The glazed eyes of paganism are fixed on Elysian glories. The per- 
turbed vision of false religions sees open doors beyond the grave. 
The howl of Tartarus roars in the ears of mythology, and the melody 
of Hades awakens joy in the breast of Mohammedan and Hebrew. 
Defined or undefined, all religions peer beyond the gates of the 
eternal, and all souls shout across the abyss of ages, we live. But 
man's acutest instinct, his intensest hope, his profoundest desire, in a 
matter of so great moment, is an insufficient foundation ; it may be 
confirmatory of faith, but the origin of faith must not be grounded 
alone in hopes and desires. Questioning such hopes, Plato affirms 
immortality; but Epicurus rejects it, and advances plausible proofs 
against it. Philosophy, compelled to deal with the psychological 
proof alone, has reported a confused mass of affirmative and negative 
accounts, and, being unsettled in its conclusions, it can settle nothing 
for inquirer or traveler. 

In this dilemma, driven out of ourselves, and away from the 
oracles of philosophy, and looking with suspicion on the data used by 
religions in general, the only thing to do is to turn to a religion that 
speaks with authority, and reveals what man can not discover. The 
true and final source of information is revelation. If the future state 
can not be rationally, that is, scientifically, demonstrated, and if 
Christianity is a divine religion, it belongs to it to make known the 
truth touching the future, with all the clearness and authority with 
which it proclaims the truths pertaining to redemption. If eternity 
is a myth, what is redemption but a myth also? If it fail on so vital 
a subject as the future, suspicion must rest upon the religion in every 
other aspect and undertaking. If it is a revelation, it must certify 
to truths in which men have a vital, personal interest, especially if 
they can not discover them themselves, and will never know them 
unless they are revealed. In this study, we feel perfectly helpless with- 
out outside aid, without a revelation. Like fishes in the Mammoth 
Cave, we have no eyes for the beyond. The light must shine upon 
us, or we shall not see at all. Dependent for information on revela- 



FAITH IN THE FUTURE LIFE AUTHORIZED. 579 

tion, and Christianity proclaiming itself to be the religion of revela- 
tion, the heart turns to it with a quiet joy, anxious to accept its 
teachings, and ready to embrace the truth, if it is made known therein. 
It is not denied that the great doctrine of the future life impreg- 
nates other religions, but it is so associated with legends and supersti- 
tious accounts, and the rewards and retributions foreshadowed are so 
rationally improbable, that the disclosures Can not be accepted as 
truths, much less the superstitions accompanying them. The Homeric 
theology is just as reliable on this subject as Brahminism and Bud- 
dhism. The old Persian .faith, and even the dreary Egyptian doctrine, 
are as authentic and as valuable in this particular as the teaching of 
Confucius and the dreams of Mohammed. Verily, the leading 
thought of these religions loses its character in the midst of the errors 
that encrust it, and calls piteously for help from a religion whose 
basis is inspiration, and whose sole content is truth. The vindication 
of the doctrine of the future life, as espoused by other religions, is 
contingent on the verity of the one religion now under consideration. 
If immortality is not a revealed truth, then it can not be a philo- 
sophical, rational, or religious truth ; but, if revealed, it is philosoph- 
ical, rational, and religious. That religion that authorizes faith in 
another life must be so consistent in all its teachings, and so primary 
in its truths, that, while one truth may be tested by experience, 
another demonstrated by observation, another established by philo- 
sophic processes, another vindicated by history, others may be taken 
as revelations. Such truths, multiplied and compatible, Christianity 
contains, and submits them to all the tests required. Its experiential 
truths, or the hidden contents of the religious consciousness, have 
been analyzed and verified in multiplied thousands of cases; its his- 
torical truths are open to the inspection of sacred and profane eyes, 
and seek the light to show their transparency; its philosophic truths, 
containing the mysteries of the ages, unfold their meaning to those 
en rapport with truth itself; its revealed truths, calm in conscious 
potentiality, and rich with divine splendors, are only the consumma- 
tion of the philosophic, historic, and experiential, and challenge error 
to immediate conflict for sovereignty. Christianity turns not back 
when it gets beyond the depths of the human mind. It reveals when 
man can not see for himself; it makes known when he can not dem- 
onstrate ; it speaks when he must be silent. A valuable religion, 
indeed, is that which travels along the beaten paths of philosophy, 
history, and experience, and weaves its story out of the fruitful 
materials of these fields; but more valuable that religion, which, over- 
leaping the boundaries of time and sense, and rising above earth- 
thoughts, can pluck fruit from the trees on the shores of that other 



580 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

land, too distant for mortal sight, and drop it into our hands as 
readily as it does the other. Christianity has its time-side, its philos- 
ophy, history, and experience, and its eternal-side, or the other life. 
It does open doors, whose hinges human hands have vainly endeavored 
to remove ; it does fore-glimpse the eternal world, not one of whose 
gates stood more than ajar until the Son of God commanded them to 
be lifted up. With Christianity as our guide into the future realm, 
superstition will be succeeded by knowledge, a beclouded faith 
will be transformed into a rational affirmation, and probability will 
emerge into certainty. 

Let it be primarily observed that the revelation of the future life is 
authentic and to be accepted without dispute ; second, it is free from 
superstition, such as haunts the old religions, and may, therefore, be 
taken in its fullness; third, it is in harmony with itself, all the 
truths of Christianity mutually agreeing, and addressing the reason as 
a whole or as one truth. This is a decisive test of the value of any 
truth, and of the value of any system of truth — the inter-harmony of 
the whole or the proportion of its parts. 

Conceding authenticity, sufficiency, and harmony to revelation, the 
eschatology of Christianity is under the limitations that belong to the 
entire system and to all parts of it ; that is, as revelation in its whole- 
ness is an indistinct presentation of truth, so its teachings concerning 
the future partake of the general limitation, indistinctness, and char- 
acter of the whole. Revelation is light; it is darkness also. The 
revelation of spiritual facts, such as atonement, regeneration, the bap- 
tism of the Holy Ghost, is incomplete and question-awakening ; 
results, not processes; facts, not explanations, are revealed. Incarna- 
tion is a fact, but shrouded in mystery ; miracle-power is on exhibi- 
tion in Christ, but explanation of it is not given ; divine sovereignty 
and human freedom, supposed by some theologians to be incompati- 
ble, are taught in the Scriptures without any attempt at reconcilia- 
tion ; how Christ can be divine and yet the subject of temptation 
are facts also, but mysteriously perplexing to those who are troubled 
with the difficulty. In like manner the eschatology of the Scriptures, 
authentic and sufficient, is the region of light and darkness ; the 
shadows of mystery fall upon us as we enter it. It is only a partial 
revelation of facts, conditions, estate, and life. The limitations, how- 
ever, have respect to those conditions concerning which curiosity 
would prompt us to inquire, but a knowledge of which is not neces- 
sary to our inspiration or salvation. Frequently, the contents of 
revelation are overlooked in the belief that the truth is only incom- 
pletely set forth, and is by virtue of these limitations unreliable and 
without value ; but, instead of settling into a suspicion that too little 



A TORNADO OF HETERODOX BELIEFS. 581 

is revealed, one will find as he goes forward in his searching after 
truth that more is revealed than has been imagined, careful study 
being required to bring out what is in revelation. If the statue is 
in the block of marble, so is the truth in the volume of inspiration. 
If beauty is in the Apollo Belvidere, so is the truth in revelation. 
The duty to ''search the Scriptures" rests upon the fact that they 
contain the words of this life and of that which is to come. 

In accurately determining the eschatological truth of Christianity, 
as distinguished from similar teachings in the old religions, we shall 
be embarrassed by the .historic interpretations of the Church, which 
are the inheritance of mankind, but which interfere at least slightly 
with independent investigation. By this it is not insinuated that such 
interpretations are erroneous, and that the Church is an unsafe guide 
in these things, and yet Christian faith has a dogmatic environment 
that sometimes has been permitted to overshadow and eclipse the faith 
itself. Of the presence and power of dogmatism we should certainly 
beware. The dictum of Roman Catholicism is a leaven from which 
the honest thinker must separate himself. But dogmatism is not 
confined to a corrupt form of Christianity, Protestantism sharing 
the tendency if not exhibiting the very spirit it condemns in such re- 
ligions as it opposes. In Roman Catholicism the seeker runs into 
purgatory; in Protestantism he confronts flesh and blood resurrec- 
tions, intermediate abodes for the dead, and semi-physical conditions 
in the future state that are quite as Quixotic as any thing he finds in 
mythology ; in corrupt forms of Christianity he hears of soul-sleep- 
ing, annihilation, the Swedenborgian idea of the resurrection, a mixed 
or a progressive heaven, and the hope of a final abandonment of hell. 
Evidently, the Church, including the heterodox and evangelical 
branches, is at variance with itself in its teachings respecting the con- 
dition of the dead, and the final disposition of souls. Nor is there 
any seeming prospect of reconciliation of conceptions so divergent, or 
of unity of view touching these supreme subjects ; on the contrary, 
the antagonism has but commenced, a tornado of heterodox beliefs is 
sweeping the world, and will continue its destructive work until old 
faiths have expired, and the truth of the Gospel has been confirmed. 
The spirit of inquiry is almost wild, but in its very recklessness it will 
go far toward the settlement of things, which means the extinction 
of error, and the affirmation of truth. We are called upon, therefore, 
to separate between the deliverances of Christianity and the utter- 
ances of creeds, councils, and man-made forms or expositions of truth, 
as the condition of rescuing the eschatology of Christianity from the 
superstitions of Christendom. If, however, the variant conceptions 
of Christendom seem rooted in the Gospel, or may be traced to 



582 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Christianity, is it certain that it is uniform in its revelations? Why 
this piebald product if the Gospel is unmistakably clear in its teach- 
ings, if it is a revelation? It must be remembered that the escha- 
tology of Christianity is not on the surface, but in the depths ; nor is 
it always clothed with the strait-jacket of literalism, but often ap- 
pears in the beautiful robes of allegorical forms ; and seldom is it 
discoursed or discussed, but hinted, hyperboled, reflected, and im- 
bedded out of sight. Hence, the need of searching. Here, then, is 
our guide, or rather our dictum; not the Church, but Christianity; 
not theories, creeds, but the profound revelations of the divine Word. 

What does Christian eschatology include ? We answer : I. The 
Immortality of the Soul ; II. An Intermediate State ; HI. The Resur- 
rection of the Dead ; IV. The Second Coming of Christ; V. The Final 
Judgment ; VI. Heaven ; VII. Hell. And whatsoever is more than 
these may be regarded as non-essential, or as explanatory of the seven 
great truths involved in eschatology. If the Scriptures reveal on these 
seven subjects any light at all, it ought to be followed ; if the light 
is sufficient for the purposes of religion, there ought to be uniformity 
of faith, and the joy that comes from the ascertainment of truth. 
To the consideration of these momentous subjects we at once address 
ourselves. 

The foundation -truth of eschatology is the immortality of the. soul. 
The existence of another, or the eternal world, so-called, is not im- 
plicit with the idea of the immortality of the soul, but the immortal- 
ity of the soul presupposes the existence of an immortal world. It 
is not enough that God's eternity be demonstrated or revealed ; it is 
not enough that the angels are immortal ; it must be shown that man 
is immortal. Will he live after he is dead? Does Julius Caesar still 
live? Is Nero still a conscious being? Does Paul see, talk, remem- 
ber, know? and will he forever live? Is Luther only a memory in this 
world, or a person in the other world ? Is Charles Sumner an intel- 
lectual giant in another sphere? To such questions what is the an- 
swer? Who will undertake to answer? Assuming that Christianity 
heroically reveals the answer, is it sustained by outside proof? May 
the doctrine of the immortality of the soul refer to philosophy for 
.vindication? If, after the revelation of the doctrine, no rational 
ground for faith in it can be discovered, and it must be accepted, if 
at all, only and wholly because it is revealed, faith itself may stagger at 
the duty required of it, and fall beneath the burden imposed upon it. 
If reason, or the philosophic sense, does not support the doctrine after 
it has been declared, then it is in jeopardy. The philosophic sense 
may not discover the truth, but it may confirm the revelation of it. 
That the doctrine is rational per se; that its philosophic basis is as 



THE PROBABILITY OF IMMORTALITY. 583 

impregnable as the philosophic basis of any other doctrine requiring 
revelation to bring it from darkness ; that its philosophic verity is un- 
impeachable, because its divine verity is the subject-matter of revela- 
tion, we devoutly believe and urge others to believe. The philosophic 
grounds for faith in immortality may now be stated. 

The intrinsic difference between soul and body constitutes a con- 
firmatory proof of the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the 
one and the mortality of the other. The difference is not superficial, 
as it is the difference of essence, whereby one can not be immortal, 
but the other may be. No one thinks of attributing immortality to 
the body ; many do think of attributing it to the soul and are unem- 
barrassed in so doing by any rational objection. Only a confused 
philosophy will confound matter and spirit. Unfortunately, the at- 
tempt to blot out the differentia of soul and body, or to identify the 
two substances, has recently been made by Bain in England and 
Hackel in Germany, but the attempt has been unsuccessful. With- 
out elaborating the differences between matter and spirit, but only re- 
minding the reader of them, it is certain that one is justified in 
believing in the antecedent probability of immortality. It' is not im- 
proper to frame probabilities from facts, or to invent inferences when 
they are in harmony with revelations. Immortality is not, however, 
an invented inference, but occupies on philosophic grounds the rank 
of a probability, and on Christian grounds the high position of a cer- 
tainty. We re-affirm that no one espouses immortality for the body. 
Its final resolution into the common mold is apparent from its consti- 
tution ; but it is philosophically absurd to predicate mortality of the 
soul upon the same ground as it is predicated of the body. If the 
soul is wanting in immortality, it lacks it for a reason that the body 
does not lack it. In other words, in our predicating we must have 
two bases ; in our reasonings and conclusions we must have two sets 
of premises. This grows out of the essential difference of the two 
entities with which we are dealing ; and, while this does not establish 
immortality for the soul, it prevents the affirmation of its mortality. 
To predicate mortality of two unlike entities, one must find two un- 
like conditions of mortality, which has not yet been done ; and the 
improbability of finding the other or unknown condition of mortality 
becomes greater as the difference between the two entities becomes 
more apparent and irreconcilable. So far forth as mortality is a con- 
dition of the body, it is not a condition of the soul. In proportion 
as they approach a common likeness, or may be referred to a common 
origin, the probability of the immortality of one diminishes; but in 
proportion as they are unlike in constituent elements and different in 
origin, the probability of immortality increases. It is at this point 



584 PHILOSOPHY AXD CHRISTIANITY, 

that Christianity adds immensely to the presumption of the soul's im- 
mortality, on the ground of its difference from the body, pointedly 
affirming that the soul is the breath of the divine life, and will return 
to God, while the body, dust-made, will return again to the dust. 

The philosophic questionings of the philosophers are not of inferior 
consequence in a discussion whose end is truth. Such questionings 
are the gleanings of the teachings of human nature, or the bountiful 
harvest from instincts, intuitions, and religious sentiments ; or, viewed 
in another form, they are the deep soundings of consciousness, show- 
ing the drift of natural faith and fear. Cato mused over his soul as 
the painter muses over the product of his art. Plato and Socrates do 
not soliloquize; they dare affirm what they believe. "Catch me 
when I am gone, if you can," was the defiant assurance of Socrates's 
faith in the future before he drank the hemlock. Seneca, Cicero, 
Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, no less than Hegel, Descartes, Leib- 
nitz, Cousin, and Lotze, discovered a satisfactory ground for faith in 
a future state, and join philosophic testimony to the revealed truth 
of this doctrine. If there can be faith in immortality ivithout revelation, 
it is evident that there can be such a faith with it. If such a faith 
Socrates triumphantly held, it was because there was a philosophic 
basis for it — he could hold it on no other ground. The ground of 
his faith was in himself. Every man is ifie proclamation of his own im- 
mortality; every soul has the warrant of its eternal existence written 
on its very face. If immortal, it must say so, or by its silence deny 
its own condition. We place infinite stress upon the verdict of the 
soul, even if it is not as disinterested testimony as we might desire. 
The testimony of the soul, being in harmony with the teachings of 
Christianity, must be the testimony of truth, even if without Chris- 
tianity such testimony may be discredited. 

Another probability of immortality arises from the necessities and 
capabilities of the soul, or the demand of another world for the full ex- 
pansion of soul-life. Continuous existence will insure ample oppor- 
tunity for the development of capabilities, supposed to be exhaust- 
less, and for the refinement of those virtues that constitute the image 
of God after which man was created. His time-life is a brief period of 
distress, misfortune, humiliation, and embarrassment ; he goes through 
the world consciously undeveloped, a giant sunken into the propor- 
tions of a dwarf, with no opportunity of becoming what is possible. 
Man is not the great creature foreshadowed in his creation. The 
diamond has turned to carbon ; the star is an orbitless comet. The 
intellectual imperfection of man, coupled with the painful fact of his 
moral apostasy, speaks loudly for a life of unclouded days, and a 
world of unsullied purity, in which he, breathing its atmosphere, and 



RECENT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTIONS. 585 

conforming to its order, may celebrate bis possibilities by transform- 
ing them into powers, and employing them in achievements all too 
great for dwarfs here, but what might be expected of free and holy 
spirits there. Immortality is the antithesis of ruin, and restoration 
to greatness in another life is the only atonement for wreckage in 
this world. 

Recently, a new conception of life has been advanced by Prof. 
Weisman, a German scientist, which, if correct, may be used as a 
scientific argument for immortal Vy that materialists can not ignore or 
invalidate. He asserts that life in its very nature is unending, and 
that death in no sense is natural to life. Death occurs as an acci- 
dent to life, and not as the inherent product of life. The proof ad- 
duced is in the history of the protozoan, which dies only as it is killed, 
or suffers accident. The division of the protozoan by which two in- 
dividuals are produced occurs without any cessation of life, and life 
only ceases as it is interfered with by an outside force. Left to itself 
it will continue forever. In this view of the case, even physical life 
seems to be immortal; but, as it is environed by death-producing 
causes, it perishes. If, then, physical life is immortal in itself, surely 
soul-life is immortal, and, unless an outside cause inflicts death upon 
it, it will continue forever. It is not in the nature of life to die ; 
and, as soul-life can not be destroyed by a physical cause, physical 
death, or the death of the body, does not affect the life of the soul. 
The death of the soul can only be effected by a cause equal to the 
soul or superior to it; a divine power only can destroy it. This 
practically and in a new way furnishes ground for scientific faith in 
immortality. The position of the German philosopher is scientifically 
correct, and the inference is in harmony with the Scriptures. 

The especial character of the soul may be referred to in proof of 
its immortality, an argument that is of philosophic weight, if of any 
weight at all. What the soul is, or in what it differs from matter, 
has engaged the thought of all the schools, both philosophic and 
theologic, with varying conclusions, and an approximate settlement 
of the subject. Hermann Lotze does not find a ground of belief in 
the soul in the fact of its apparent freedom of action, or that its 
substantiality is different from that of matter because psychical pro- 
cesses are apparently different from physical processes ; but he does 
discover the character of the soul in the unity of consciousness, a some- 
thing that can not be predicated of matter or physical life. Estab- 
lishing its character by this phenomenal mark of a single and identical 
consciousness, he proceeds to define the soul by its activity, that is, 
by its manifestation. "The soul is what it does;" "every soul is 
what it shows itself to be, unity whose life is in definite ideas, feel- 



586 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ings, and efforts;" "to a certain extent the soul shows itself to be an 
independent center of actions and reactions;" so says Lotze. This is 
a key to the study of its character ; and, inasmuch as it differs in the 
fact of its consciousness from matter, Lotze affirms that it is a "pre- 
mundane substance," and "that in no changes of the world, whatever 
they may be, can either an origin or an end be ascribed to it." This 
is immortality, or a supplement of Prof. Weisman's conclusion, that 
the death of the body can not affect the soul. 

The common grounds, outside of the instructions of religion, for 
a belief in immortality are semi-philosophical, and of historical value ; 
as proofs they are circumstantial rather than direct and conclusive. 
The existence of faith in immortality, on the account of its genesis and 
universality, is given an importance none too large in polemical dis- 
cussions of the subject ; for whether religion originated such faith 
or has maintained it, or whether it is a natural instinct, the fact re- 
mains that faith in immortality is world-wide and supreme in the 
thoughts of men. The universality of belief in a future life can 
not be dismissed as the product of authority or the result of edu- 
cation alone. It is grounded in man himself. If it is supposed that the 
natural love of life and the horror of annihilation have joined in the 
production of faith in another existence, it must be admitted that 
these are powerful incentives, and they show that such faith has. its 
roots deep in humanity, and must not be ruthlessly plucked up and 
destroyed. Again, the effect of this faith on man himself in pro- 
moting self-development, self-purity, and in restraining the vicious ten- 
dency, is an incidental proof of a second life of no mean value. The 
sense of responsibilitv gains in force as it is impressed upon men that 
they must give an account to God, and they regulate themselves 
and order their lives in harmony with righteousness as they under- 
stand that the next life will be determined by the facts of this life. 
Even the analogies of nature, sometimes used as arguments, are not 
to be despised, since it is more comforting than if they Avere on the 
other side, or opposed in their suggestions to the idea of immortality. 
If nature by any of its processes counterfeits immortality, or attempts 
its realization, it helps one to go farther and suspect an actual im- 
mortality in another sphere. Suggestions from history, nature, sci- 
ence, psychology, and astronomy are eagerly appropriated by believers 
in immortality and turned into arguments in favor of the belief; and 
these taken in connection with fundamental and philosophical truths 
impress man most profoundly with the conviction that another life 
succeeds the present. 

To this rational, historic, and philosophic conclusion more than 
one objection has been raised, and the inspiring hope of immortality 



SPECIAL PLEADING OF STRAUSS. 587 

has been bartered for a contrary hypothesis. Goethe expressed his 
belief in the future as follows: "The conviction of continuous exist- 
ence suggests itself to me from the conception of activity ; for if I 
am unceasingly active to my very end, nature is bound to assign to me 
another form of being, if the present one is no longer capable of ful- 
filling the requirements of my spirit." Acknowledging the beauty 
of this sentiment, Strauss assails it as only the special form of the 
common belief, and ridicules the idea that "nature is bound to as- 
sign " any body another form of being. He also declares that Goethe 
had " lived out his life" and needed no other world for his develop- 
ment, striking in this conclusion at the common supposition of the infinite 
capacity for development of the human soul. Admitting that Schil- 
ler died before his full development, he yields so far as to say that 
if another life is needed for those who have not reached their maxi- 
mum, they also must perish when the maximum is attained, and 
that a "life extending interminably" can not be inferred from the 
premises, or from what he hesitatingly allows. Most manifestly his 
argument is reactionary in its assumption and concession. The as- 
sumption that Goethe had exhausted himself can not be explained, 
except on the ground of special pleading, for the mind testifies to 
itself of an ever-widening consciousness ; and if Strauss ever had the 
feeling of Victor Hugo, that God is in him, he would be ready to 
believe that he had scarcely begun to develop in this life. Said the 
Frenchman: "I feel in myself the future life. I feel I have not 
said the thousandth part of what is in me. When I go down to 
the grave I can say, like so many others, ' I have finished my day's 
work,' but I can not say, 'I have finished my life.' My day's work 
will begin again the next morning." The future is in us, unending de- 
velopment is before us. No human being can say of another, nor of 
himself, that he has exhausted his capacity and developed all his pos- 
sibilities to their full proportion of growth and fruitfulness, and that 
henceforth, should he live longer, he could not advance beyond his 
present achievement. This assumes a complete knowledge of the hu- 
man mind and the discovery of certain fixed limitations that even an 
eternal existence will not remove. Strauss pronouncing Goethe com- 
plete, finished, exhausted ! He did not know him ; Strauss never knew 
himself. 

The concession that Schiller could develop more with a continued 
life, and that, therefore, there may be another life, is a surrender 
to the advocates of immortality, for all that they philosophically 
claim is that the soul enters upon a second life, which in its very 
nature is eternal, and that the soul attains its full development in it. 
Given a life suited to the development of the soul, and the prob- 



588 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ability of immortality is assured, for in such a life the soul will de- 
velop into an immortal condition, even if it were not inherently im- 
mortal before its entrance into the eternal state. The eternal world 
will breathe its eternity into newly admitted souls and adapt them 
to its unending duration. .Given existence at all after death, and eternal 
existence ensues. The belief in immortality has been suspected 
of including by the arguments it employs entirely too much, or 
more than it originally intended, for it is alleged that the argument 
that makes out the immortality of man will also establish the immor- 
tality of brutes. Annihilation is unknown to science; matter is 
immortal. 

If matter in some form must ever exist, then it is not incredible 
that soul in some form will exist, nor is it at all incredible that 
brutes, as such, or in other forms, will occupy the eternal spaces 
and spheres. It is no argument against the one that it proves the 
other also. Both brutes and men co-exist here ; analogy might sug- 
gest their co-existence there. However, we can not permit ourselves 
to avow faith in the immortality of brutes, but, giving full force to 
the objection, it is evident it does not invalidate or even touch the 
question of man's immortality. Brutes may or may not be immortal, 
we are not concerned. That which is of interest is to know if man 
is immortal. 

Of even less weight is the scientific objection that the universe is 
the representative of a fixed amount of energy, and that its contin- 
uance in any form is contingent on the retention and activity of the 
total energy. The soul is the source of the highest energy, and con- 
tributes its possession to the great mass of the universe. Now, it is 
claimed if the soul is taken from the physical universe and contrib- 
utes its energy to another universe, the equilibrium of the physical 
universe is disturbed, and its existence is in peril. Immortality is, 
therefore, a menace to the peace and welfare of the universe. 
Scientists are not prone to consider all the facts ; they are specialists, 
and notice only what is within their departments. The physical system 
is only one-half the universe; the other half is the spiritual uni- 
verse. The whole universe is a double-faced system, being physical 
on one side and spiritual on the other, but correlated and inter- 
penetrating, the energy of one passing into the other, and each under 
control of the other. The passage of energy from the physical to the 
spiritual results in no loss of energy or disturbance of the equilibrium, 
since there returns from the spiritual to the physical a counter-current 
of influence that makes for order and stability. The passage of souls 
is equated by the transmission of spiritual energy in another form. 
Our speculations must cease. Going outside of Revelation, we find 



SCANTY INTIMATIONS OF JUDAISM. 589 

the belief in immortality supported by the old religions, by the difference 
between soul and body, by the character and aspirations of the soul for 
something beyond, by the necessity of another life for development, by the 
tender musings of philosophy in its robust periods of thought, by scientific 
discoveries touching the question of life and death, by tJie common historical 
grounds of universal faith, and the analogies of nature, and is not over- 
thrown or even shaken by objections, scientific, philosophic, or superstitious, 
arrayed against it. The issue of this survey is the probability of im- 
mortality. 

The certainty of immortality, or the positive assurance of another 
life, is derived from Revelation. Given Revelation, and the forego- 
ing arguments, hints, and suppositions, are confirmations of the great 
truth, and appear relevant in a discussion of it. The outside adum- 
brations of immortality are fulfilled by the inside revelations of it, 
which we are ready to examine. Christianity, as understood, is the 
religion of the New Testament ; but a larger view includes the Old 
Testament, in which are found the germs or roots of religious ideas, 
that assume a developed form in the new economy of Christ. Both 
the patriarchal and prophetic dispensations related to a future religion, 
and prepared the way for it by forecasting its contents and losing 
themselves in its loftier manifestation. The eschatology of the new 
had its antecedent signs in the old religion, or, as it is conceded, 
the Gospel brought immortality to light from the darkness of the 
Judaic administration. It is an extreme to assume that the ancient 
Judaic faith was barren of immortal hope, and that patriarchs, 
judges, kings, and prophets walked in the deepest shadows, without 
a single ray of light illuminating their pathway. They lived in the 
twilight age of the world, when truth was obscurely presented, but 
they discovered it in its obscurity ; they had eyes and could see ; they 
had intelligence and could know ; and they were awake to all that has 
ever concerned man, and studied his destiny with an interest as pro- 
found as that which animates those who walk in the clearer light of 
the Gospel. At the same time, the Old Testament is not a manual 
on immortality, nor does it excite in the student that anticipation of 
another existence, which it is the business of a final religion to inspire ; 
it awakens hope, but it does not reveal knowledge ; it suggests faith, 
but permits doubt to accompany it ; it makes immortality probable, 
but not certain. Prof. Tayler Lewis finds in Judaism a number of 
"scanty intimations" of a future life, over which the "veil of a 
solemn reserve " has been thrown, because, in the age of its glory, 
"there was danger of more evil thoughts coming out of the doctrine 
than good ones." In his judgment, the obscure doctrine had a 
" higher moral power" than a clearer doctine could have had, inasmuch 



590 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

as, in its reserved form, it did not excite the fancy or lead to super- 
stition. This is not a satisfactory reason, for, if valid, the doctrine 
ought not to be revealed in the New Testament, since it has led to 
the most extravagant conceptions, and to just such dangerous opinions 
and heresies as he imagines it would have produced in the days of 
Greek and Roman ascendency. The ' ' reserve " in the Old Testament 
is in accordance with the evolutionary plan of revelation, divine 
truth being made known as the world progressed in intelligence, and 
as the religious need of men required additions to their knowledge of 
divine things. The old economy, having an educational function, and 
intended to fore-shadow the brilliant disclosures of the new, stepped 
forward slowly, and revealed its hints and aspirations, only to retire 
when the actual truth swallowed up all hints and apparitions in itself. 
Speaking of the "void left in the Jewish mind," Dean Stanley ob- 
serves that, "the future life was not denied or contradicted, but it 
was overlooked or set aside, overshadowed by the consciousness of the 
living, actual presence of God himself." The idea of Judaism was 
monotheism, and eschatology was an incidental factor of it. This 
explanation is drawn from the spirit and purposes of Judaism, as 
contained in and revealed by its history from the days of Abraham 
until the advent of Christ, and is unobjectionable. 

In the New Testament, the doctrine of the future life occupies no 
obscure place, but is as prominent in the teachings of the Savior and 
his apostles as the pillars of the Parthenon in Greek civilization. 
Immortality in parables ; immortality in histories ; immortality in 
biographies ; immortality in laws ; immortality in rewards and pun- 
ishments ; immortality in ethics ; immortality in epistles, visions, 
doctrines, counsels ; immortality in Churches, elderships, magistracies, 
and governments ; immortality in conduct, life, labors, and death- 
scenes ; immortality at the grave, and written on the tomb-stone of 
the ages — Christianity is full of it, and breathes it into the world. 
The proverb passed from lip to lip in the early Church that Christ 
had "abolished death" and John wrote from Patmos that Christ 
held the keys of death, hell, and the grave. It was Christ who re- 
minded the thief of Paradise, and who, in one of his parables, spoke 
of "Abraham's bosom" as the abode; of the righteous, and of gehenna 
as the abode of the ungodly ; it was Christ who declared to his disci- 
ples, "I go to prepare a place for you, . . . and I will come 
again and receive you unto myself;" and who also said that, in the 
great day, he would banish from his presence those who had not be- 
lieved in him ; it was Christ who declared that the righteous shall go 
into life eternal, but the ungodly into everlasting punishment. He 
"brought immortality to light," and his apostles proclaimed it wher- 



IMMORTALITY AN ENDOWMENT. 591 

ever they went, recorded it in all their epistles, and left it as the 
inheritance of the Church for the ages to come. It is true we write 
under the spell of our faith in the doctrine, and, if this is a disquali- 
fication for impartial searching, we can not help it; we desire the 
doctrine to be true ; we believe it is true, first from philosophy, second 
from revelation. Believing it to be true, it has magnetized us, and 
led us to appropriate in its support every argument, every fact, 
every allusion, found in history, science, religions, philosophy, and 
Christianity, and nothing is clearer to our vision than that man is 
immortal. 

What is his title to immortality ? The only being who is essen- 
tially immortal is God ; the angels are immortal by endowment. It 
is as possible for God to deprive them of it as it was possible for him 
to confer it. Man is immortal by the same voluntary power and 
goodness; his immortality is an endowment — it is the gift of God. 
It is possible for God to extinguish the immortality of any of his 
subjects ; the soul can be annihilated, just as angels might be destroyed 
forever. As an abstract proposition, this is perfectly defensible ; as 
an event that has occurred, or will ever occur, it is without proof. 
Immortality guaranteed by creation, or in any other way, it must 
ever remain ; annihilation will never be enforced against a human 
soul. At this point thinkers divide, some contending that annihila- 
tion will be the portion of the wicked, while immortality will be the 
reward of the righteous. Certainly a forfeiture of immortality would 
be an incalculable and irreparable loss, so great that it is a question 
if an unforgiven soul would not prefer eternal existence in hell to 
absolute non-existence forever. The preference in the matter, how- 
ever, is not urged as an agument against it ; the possibility of anni- 
hilation is not urged as an argument in favor of it. 

Others contend that immortality is not a natural endowment, but 
the special gift of Christ to all who believe in him, so that unsaved 
men are not immortal, and perish forever because they are not im- 
mortal. This depends upon our knowledge of antecedent facts 
involved in the creation of man and his loss of life by sin. When 
Adam was created, he received the spirit of immortality, being made 
in the image of God ; when he transgressed the first prohibition ever 
given from the throne, he lost divine favor, but not immortality. 
Holiness, not immortality, was involved in the fall ; the recovery, 
therefore, is a recovery to righteousness only. This is a brief state- 
ment, but it comprehends all the facts. It does not admit annihila- 
tion, since the question of existence is not involved. It does not 
admit the idea of immortality as a gift, since it was not affected by 
the fall. Sin or no sin, death or no death, the soul is immortal. 



592 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Besides, the condemned angels are not doomed to annihilation, 
but to conscious punishment and degradation, which implies continued 
living. By analogy, we reason that the punishment of unpardoned 
souls is not the loss of immortality, or annihilation. To accept the 
other view requires us to distinguish some souls as mortal and others 
as immortal, or two kinds of souls, whereas all souls are alike in 
their origin and constituent facts, the final difference between them 
being moral, and not constitutional. The thought of mortal souls is 
in harmony with false and skeptical science, and it is in the direction 
of a false and perverted religion. The distinction between soul and 
body can not be maintained if immortality be regarded a gift, and 
that the wicked naturally go into annihilation. Immortality is the 
inalienable fact of every soul, and it will be an abuse of the divine 
power for any cause now known or conceivable to quench or modify it. 

Not the most serious, but the most uncertain, problem of escha- 
tology, and of commanding proportions, is that of the resurrection 
of the dead. It is a theological problem, since it is associated with 
final religious events ; it is metaphysical, as it involves philosophical 
conditions, relations, and suppositions ; it is less important than 
others, since an understanding of it is in no sense a condition of sal- 
vation ; and one can not be accused of heresy in holding to any par- 
ticular view of it, since many views obtain in the Christian Church, 
not one of which is regarded standard or the fixed view of believers. 
The most that can be said respecting it is, that it is a revealed doc- 
trine of the Scriptures; the best doctrinal exposition of it is that given 
by Paul; and the clearest idea one gets of it has not yet satisfied 
the Church at large that it is the true and only idea to be adopted. 
Theologians, philosophers, all, are in a cloud, or in the sea, respect- 
ing the great doctrine. 

As to the fact of a resurrection, there are few who doubt that it 
is contemplated in the Scriptures, and that it is intimately related to 
the consummation of Christianity, even those who, like Hymenseus, 
charge that it has taken place, agreeing that it occupies a position 
in the history of the new religion. The agitation rages over the 
character of the resurrection, and the time when it shall occur. It is 
not asked, Will there be a resurrection ? It is asked, What kind of a 
resurrection will there be? Summarily, What is the resurrection f 
Are we certain we understand it? Misunderstandings certainly do 
exist, and have always existed, respecting the doctrine, Paul himself 
having been interpreted differently, and confusion being the total 
result. Certain interpretations have been dominant in the circles of 
Christian thought, but not one is considered supreme in itself, or su^ 
perior to others, or satisfactory to the majority. 



THEORIES OF THE RESURRECTION. 593 

Preliminarily, the theories of the resurrection must have recogni- 
tion, inasmuch as they are held and advocated by thoughtful minds, 
and possibly one of them may satisfactorily explain the fact of the 
resurrection ; or, in the combination of two or more, a pathway t'o the 
actual fact of which we are in search may be opened. 

I. The common or the most widely accepted interpretation of the 
doctrine is, that the natural body which suffers death will be raised 
by the power of God from the grave, be fitted by virtue of spiritual 
processes for the eternal condition, and be reunited to the soul as its 
partner forever. It is not difficult to build around this interpretation 
a great many passages of Scripture, and to offer defensible arguments 
in its behalf; but the drift of metaphysical thought is in other direc- 
tions. This is known as the "literal" theory. 

II. Origen, he of the third century, advanced the idea that the 
identical natural body will not rise, but a body composed of natural 
properties, and exactly resembling the old body, will appear as the 
resurrection-body, produced by the power of the soul to organize for itself 
a body suited to the various spheres of its existence. This implies the 
creation of a new body. 

III. The Germ theory, or that advocated by Samuel Drew, is in 
substance that, in the human body, there is a "certain principle of 
future being," which "shall form the rudiments of our future bodies." 
It is indestructible. The old is the nucleus of the new body. 

IV. Still another is Swedenborg's conception that the soul is clothed 
with a spiritual body, which, at the death of the natural body, enters 
the spiritual body, where it abides forever. The resurrection is the 
rising of the soul at death with its spiritual body into the eternal state. 

V. Again, it has been suggested that the resurrection is the rising 
of souls out of hades on the great and notable day of the Lord, when 
they shall appear before him to render an account of their earth-life 
and receive judgment. Mr. Alger supports the theory, and turns some 
Scripture in its behalf. 

VI. An evolutional resurrection has been surmised from Paul's 
illustration of the seed producing its kind ; so the resurrection-body 
will be after the pattern, though not of the substance, of the 
natural body. 

VII. The resurrection-body, Bishop R. S. Foster supposes, will be 
a " suitable body," devised by the Creator for the soul; it will not be 
a "reproduction of the old body." 

That these so-called resurrections have a Scriptural basis, and that 
they may be vindicated by intensely and cogently rational arguments, 
is clear to one who listens to their advocates ; but, after listening to 
all, we inquire, which is the correct theory? or are they all correct? 

38 



594 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

The seven theories, apparently different, are not altogether mutually 
opposed ; one is not exclusive of all the others. The literal theory, 
the germ theory, and the evolution theory are not so far apart as to 
be radically antagonistic; but, agreeing as to the relation of the 
natural body to the resurrection-body, they should harmonize on lesser 
features, and vindicate the resurrection from the single stand-point 
of the transformation of the natural into a spiritual body. The 
theories of Origen, Swedenborg, and Bishop Foster should coalesce, 
each conceding unimportant points, and uniting on the main point 
of the appearance of a spiritual body as the resurrection-body. The 
theory of Alger stands alone. We have, therefore, but three theories 
of the resurrection: (a) That theory that involves the natural body, 
more or less, in the event of the resurrection ; (b) That theory that 
eliminates the natural body, and involves a spiritual body, in the event 
of the resurrection ; (c) That theory that eliminates both a natural 
and spiritual body from the resurrection, involving only the deliver- 
ance of souls from the intermediate world, as the condition of entrance 
into final everlasting abodes. Prizing distinctions as stepping-stones 
to truth, we once more characterize the theories as (a) natural, (6) 
spiritual, (c) soulical. The natural or literal resurrection has been 
supported by Bishop C. Kingsley, Bishop D. W. Clark, and recently 
by Dr. R. J. Cooke in a masterly exposition; the spiritual or anti- 
natural resurrection is ably maintained by Swedenborg, Bishop Foster, 
Dr. Newman Smyth, and others; the soulical resurrection has coun- 
tenance from W. R. Alger and others of mixed faith. 

The arguments, both rational and Scriptural, employed in the 
defense of these theories, and the manner in which objections to 
them are removed or answered, would furnish a chapter of inter- 
esting reading ; we can not more than notice a few, in order to 
indicate the general support that each receives. As to the natural 
resurrection, Dr. Cooke insists that there can be no other than the 
literal reproduction of the "material fleshly " body ; any other kind 
of a body would not be a resurrection-body. A created body, or a 
body resembling the natural body, or a body evolved from the natural 
body, can not be the resurrection-body ; that is, the resurrection is the 
standing again of the natural body. This is not an ambiguous statement, 
nor a double-faced definition ; but it is very like the definition of 
baptism urged in some quarters, that it is immersion, and nothing 
else ; resurrection is the reappearance of the natural body, and no 
other kind of a body can be substituted. The definition of the 
word is, then, regarded as a support of the natural theory. Bishop 
Foster does not accept the definition or its application. "The word 
resurrection," he says, "is strained when it is insisted that it is 



RESURRECTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL. 595 

equivalent to the statement that the exact body is to be restored." 
Quoting again : ' ' The resurrection is the standing again of the person 
in a body, or after his severance from the gross body." Substantially, 
Dr. Newman Smyth agrees with this conception, for he says: "Our 
resurrection shall not be . . . simply a setting free from the 
bonds of the flesh of a finer spiritualized form, . . . but it shall 
be . . . the assimilation by the living energy or soul of these 
bodies ... of the material of the unseen universe," or " the 
gathering, around the vitalizing principle, of the materials of a more 
spiritual body from the heavenly places." Paul alludes to the ques- 
tion that some will urge, " With what body do they come?" implying 
that it was an undecided problem in his day as to what the resurrec- 
tion-body will be. At the same time, the apostle does assure his 
readers that Jesus Christ will "change these vile bodies, and fashion 
them like unto his own glorious body," apparently implying that the 
natural body is the subject of the resurrection. 

Again, it is urged that, as the body is united with the soul in 
this life, so must it be united with the soul in the next life, to share 
either the rewards or punishments that may finally be decreed by the 
unerring wisdom and faultless justice of the great Judge. Growing 
out of this thought is that other, that before the resurrection the soul 
only is immortal, but after the resurrection man — body and soul — is 
immortal. For the natural theory, the three supports are, the defini- 
tion of the word, Scriptural passages in apparent harmony with it, and 
the necessity of a literal resurrection to restore man to his complete- 
ness, and to involve all there is of him here in the awards of all that 
may be possible in a future life. The threefold argument is plausible, 
and, in the absence of rebutting testimony, is well-nigh conclusive; 
but it is not certain that it is unimpeachable. 

The definition itself needs reconstruction. Etymologically, it is 
not certain that it refers to the natural body. The application of it 
to the natural body for nearly fifteen centuries has led many to believe 
that any other application is indefensible, and that a denial of the inter- 
pretation will be fatal to the integrity of Christianity as a system of 
truth. The "resurrection of the body" is not a Scriptural phrase; 
the " resurrection of the dead" is Scriptural. The former phrase, ex- 
pressive, perhaps, of the belief of the early Christians, was not coined 
or embalmed in creed-form until the fourth century ; nevertheless, it 
probably represents the Christian idea. Little allusion is made in the 
Scriptures to the resurrection of the body; frequent allusion is made 
to the resurrection of the individual, or the resurrection of personality. 
For example, the Savior says (John vi, 54), "and I will raise him up 
at the last day." It is a question if the resurrection of the body is 



596 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

equivalent to the resurrection of the person, and it is equally a ques- 
tion if the arguments employed in the defense of the one are not as 
available for the defense of the other. 

Scripturally, the believer in the natural theory must not be over- 
confident that all the apostles, including the Master himself, are on 
his side, for Paul says: "Flesh and blood can not inherit the king- 
dom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption." One 
would conclude, from reading the advocates of the three great theo- 
ries, that Paul favored all of them, for he is quoted, explained, and 
referred to by all, as the unanswerable defender of their faith. 

Likewise, the arguments touching the natural theory are not all 
on one side, nor are those framed with special reference to it exhaust- 
ively complete, or inwardly satisfactory. It is clear that the body is 
not necessary to conscious existence hereafter ; it is not so clear that it 
is necessary to a perfect existence hereafter. Respecting the material- 
istic view, Dr. Newman Smyth observes: "The body which shall be 
is not fashioned of matter of the same kind as these earthly bodies. 
It is not of the earth earthy. The earthliness in which the seed is 
buried does not appear in the flower. . . . Our science leaves us 
no tenable support for it. Any proper physiological conception of the 
human body precludes it. Is it necessary for any one, at this late 
day, to spend time in clearing the simplicity of the Biblical doctrine 
of the resurrection of the dead from the cumbersome additions of the 
traditional teaching of the resurrection of the flesh ?" This is in the 
right direction. If the conditions of the future life are different 
from those of the present life; if the employments of spirits are dif- 
ferent from the employments of mortals ; if the resources, agencies, 
and objects of the immortal life are different from such as obtain in 
our time-life, — it is incredible that the natural body, even glorified, 
can have any functions or prerogatives in the other life. Plotinus 
rejoiced that his soul was not to be tied to an immortal body. 

Dr. Cooke traces the " hyper-spiritualistic " ideas of the resurrec- 
tion, which have more or less infected Christian belief from the days 
of Origen, to the influence of Gnostic philosophy, which looked upon 
matter as inferior to the soul, and as the residence of evil ; and a class 
of Christian thinkers appropriating the philosophy gradually and 
philosophically ignored a material resurrection. While the^ Gnostic 
principle is antagonistic to the resurrection of the natural body, it 
must not be forgotten that it contributed toward relieving Christian- 
ity of certain phases of materialism that are incompatible with its 
character, and would be fatal in these days to its progress as a spir- 
itual religion. Christianity is a spiritual religion ; nearly all its doc- 
trines are spiritual ; and so far forth as any doctrine is reduced to a 



RESURRECTION OF THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 597 

material form and urged as such, it compromises the religion and 
mantles its spiritual character. Immersion is a materialistic phase 
of baptism, which the Church will finally outgrow; transubstantiation 
and consubstantiation are materialistic interpretations of the Eucha- 
rist ; the pre-millennial reign of Christ on earth is a materialistic con- 
ception of Christ's spiritual government in the world ; and the natural 
resurrection is a materialistic type of the spiritual resurrection that occurs 
at the end of the world. In this materialistic age we must abandon ma- 
terialistic ideas of religion. 

As to the soulical theory, taking it out of its order in the discus- 
sion, since it can not be amplified or vindicated, it is almost enough 
to say that it is not at all contained in the word resurrection. It im- 
plies a resurrection of souls, whereas the resurrection of the New Tes- 
tament involves a resurrection of bodies. It is true, as Mr. Alger 
shows, that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of " the 
spirits of just men made perfect in the heavenly Jerusalem," but the 
word spirit may mean the conscious life or the whole personality, as 
found after the resurrection, or it may mean the spiritual body of the 
soul in its 'perfected form, as it appears in the heavenly Jerusalem. 
If it has any reference whatever to the resurrection, it must imply 
the spiritual body, which is the subject of resurrection, and not the 
spiritual being after the resurrection. A resurrection of souls from 
the under-world, or the intermediate abode, doubtless will take place ; 
but it is straining the word, perverting the Scriptures, and invalidat- 
ing nearly all the arguments used for either a natural or spiritual 
resurrection, to apply it to the deliverance of souls from hades. This 
is not a resurrection at all. 

The spiritual theory is in its very terms antagonistic to the natu- 
ral theory. It may be objectionable, but it can not be abruptly dis- 
missed as incompatible with the idea of resurrection. The word itself 
will allow either the natural or spiritual thoory, and the arguments 
for one are as indisputably strong as those for the other. With many 
it is a question of choice which to adopt, one being as plausible as 
the other ; with others it is a question of conviction, the spiritual 
being the preferred view. In general terms the resurrection is in- 
tended to be a deliverance of the soul from the reign of matter, or the 
extinction of its bondage to corruption. Death alone, or the separa- 
tion of soul and body, does not accomplish this end, for full deliver- 
ance from evil also implies complete equipment for good. Disembodi- 
ment must be followed by re-embodiment, or one body, mortal and 
corruptible, must be exchanged for another body, immortal and in- 
corruptible. The decisive argument in favor of the spiritual body is 
Scriptural. Without a Scriptural basis the theory would be not only 



598 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

untenable, but revolutionary and infidelic. Its ground is in the 
Scriptures, both in the Old and New Testaments. The resurrection 
is alluded to more positively in the Old Testament than the doctrine 
of immortality, and is a powerful argument in its favor. Job declares 
that in his flesh he shall see God ; David asserts his flesh shall rest in 
hope; Isaiah announces, "Thy dead men shall live, (together with) 
my dead body shall they arise f Ezekiel prophecies the resurrection 
of the body by the resurrection of the dry bones in the valley ; and 
Daniel decrees that "many of them that sleep in the dust of the 
earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and 
everlasting contempt." Now, without controversy, the resurrection 
in the Old Testament is materialistic or natural, but it is on that ac- 
count no proof of the materialistic type of the actual resurrection. 
Mr. Alger finds a materialistic resurrection in Zoroastrianism, which 
he affirms gave birth to the Jewish doctrine, and the Jewish became 
in turn the mother of the Christian idea, or materialistic conception 
of the resurrection in the Christian Church. For this opinion we 
care nothings because it does not settle the question of the character 
of the resurrection body. To say that a Christian doctrine has its 
roots in Jewish teaching, and that Jewish teaching borrowed itself 
from Persian sages, does not invalidate it ; it may be a true doctrine, 
whatever its source. 

It is all-important to know, however, what is the significance of 
the flesh-and-blood resurrection of the Jewish economy. Is it per se 
the resurrection of the new religion, or only the materialistic type of 
a spiritual event to occur at the end of the world ? The atonement 
of the old economy was materialistic ; the atonement of the new is 
spiritualistic. The religion of the old was ceremonial, physical, legal ; 
the religion of the new, spiritual altogether. The resurrection of the 
old was materialistic, the resurrection of the new is spiritual The old 
idea was glorious, but it has lost its glory in the " glory that excell- 
eth." So the analogy of faith teaches and requires. The New Tes- 
tament doctrine of the resurrection is the fulfillment or development 
of the Old Testament doctrine ; but if the one resurrection is the same 
as the other, there is no development, there is repetition. Is the 
New Testament, in its monotheism, atonement, and spirituality, a de- 
velopment of the Old Testament, but as touching the resurrection, is 
it but a repetition? Because Christ and the apostles used the same 
words for the new resurrection as were used by the Jews for the old 
idea of it, Dr. Cooke argues that they must have meant the same 
resurrection. This is very inconclusive, and violates the relations of 
the old to the new. The word Sabbath in the Old does not signify 
the day that it represents in the New, except when so mentioned. 



INTERPRET A TIONS OF PA UL. 599 

The word sacrifice in the Old has a different application in the New. 
The word atonement in the Old Testament means one kind of sacri- 
fice — in the New Testament another kind of sacrifice. Likewise the 
word resurrection in the Old Testament means a different event in the 
New Testament. To the New Testament let us turn. 

Paul intimates what the resurrection body will be when he says, 
"For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with 
our house, which is from heaven." If the natural body can be spoken 
of as "our earthly house of this tabernacle," the spiritual body can 
be spoken of as " our house which is from heaven." The natural 
resurrection body is the " earthly house ;" the spiritual resurrection 
body is the " heavenly house." That is, it is a heavenly and not the 
earthly body. This is conclusive. Again, when brought before the 
Sanhedrin, Paul opened his defense with the exclamation, "Of the 
hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question." He af- 
firms the resurrection of the dead, but who are the dead ? When it 
was reported that " General Grant is dead," it was meant that he had 
separated from his body. Re is dead — not his body. "The dead" 
are the living individuals ; they are not putrefying bodies. The 
dead — that is, the conscious individuals — shall stand in living 
bodies again ; in this life they stood in corruptible bodies ; in the 
next they stand in incorruptible bodies. So seems to say the great 
apostle. 

Dr. R. J. Cooke assumes that the Greeks understood Paul on Mars' 
Hill to preach a " literal corpse resurrection," and hence were infuriated 
and disgusted ; but this does not establish that he did preach it. It es- 
tablishes that they construed the spiritual resurrection into a gross, 
carnal resurrection, just what Dr. Cooke has done, just what the nat- 
uralists and materialists do, and are led to renounce it, just what the 
natural mind is prone to do whenever the Gospel is preached. It is 
easy to paraphrase the spiritual into the physical, and to speak of the 
incorruptible as the corruptible. Reducing the spiritual teaching to a 
physical idea, it becomes foolishness to the natural mind, and even a 
stumbling-block to the fleshly and the ungodly. It by no means 
solves the problem, or throws any daylight upon it, to be told 
that the Greeks understood Paul to mean a particular thing ; the 
question is not what the Greeks thought he meant, but what did he 
mean ? That he employed Jewish terms when he addressed the Jews, 
and Greek terms when he addressed the Greeks, only proves that he 
undertook to represent the great doctrine in the language of the peo- 
ple whom he addressed, without graduating the truth to their precon- 
ceived ideas of it, or conforming the doctrine to any existing notion 
by running it in the language-mold of the people. Employing their 



600 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

language, the doctrine was not their doctrine. Sameness of language 
is not equivalent to sameness of doctrine. 

The fundamental chapter on the resurrection of the dead is that 
which composes a part of Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians. It 
is singular that this chapter has been so often perverted in the inter- 
est of the theory of a natural resurrection, while the whole is unmis- 
takably a revelation of the spiritual resurrection. " There is a natural 
body and there is a spiritual body." Here the existence of the two 
kinds of bodies is affirmed. " It is sown a natural body, it is raised a 
spiritual body." Evidently the sowing is not the resurrection ; the 
raising is the resurrection. Now, if a spiritual body is raised, then 
the resurrection relates to a spiritual body. The natural body is 
sown, but it is not raised. In keeping with this distinction Paul af- 
firms that "as we have borne the image of the earthy," or natural, 
"we shall also bear the image of the heavenly," or spiritual. This 
distinction is also illustrated by the sowing of grain and the product 
thereof as follows: "That which thou sowest, thou so west not that 
body that shall be;" that is, the natural body shall not be the future 
body; " but God giveth it a body as it* hath pleased him, and to 
every seed his own body." The revelation is that God will give to the 
soul such a body as shall please him, which can not be the natural body, 
because "thou sowest not that body that shall be," but it will be a 
" spiritual body," of which Paul speaks. 

Paul's seed-thought is pregnant with another suggestion. The 
seed is planted; the hull dies; the vitalizing principle re-appears in 
the grain. The seed is man, physical and spiritual, or body and 
soul ; the hull is the body ; the soul is the immortal principle that 
re-appears after the dissolution of the body, waiting until the resur- 
rection for the spiritual body, or to become the perfect grain ; that 
is the perfect man again. To us the apostolic argument is transpar- 
ent, elaborate, and unanswerable in its revelation of the resurrection- 
body as spiritual and incorruptible. 

The Lord's resurrection might be studied, and a conclusion in 
harmony with the Pauline revelation be drawn ; but we have not 
space to analyze that event. Bishop Foster concedes too much when 
he asserts that Christ's body is not a pattern of our resurrection ; 
for, while it may not be a pattern, it sustains the spiritual quite as 
freely as the natural theory, and should not be eliminated from the 
discussion. At one time Christ's body seems natural, human; at 
another, spiritual, immortal. He assumed a natural appearance to 
convince his disciples that he was alive again ; and a spiritual appear- 
ance, to suggest to them the resurrection-body. The true resurrection- 
body manifested itself in spiritual phenomena which they recognized ; 



SCIENTIFIC VERIFICATION. 601 

but, as their chief concern was to be assured of his power over death, 
the spiritual body worked temporarily through the natural body, 
which, as an exception to the general order, may possibly have as- 
cended on high and become assimilated with the spiritual body, to 
reign with it forever. 

The most satisfactory revelation from Christ touching the resur- 
rection life appears in his conversation with the Sadducees, who, 
disbelieving in the resurrection, propounded to him a question which 
they imagined would confuse him. His answer we give (Matt, xxii, 
30) : "For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in 
marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven." The resurrection-body 
is as an angel-body, which is spiritual, heavenly. "As touching the 
resurrection of the dead," he says, " God is not the God of the dead, but 
of the living ;" that is, the resurrection relates to the living souls, and 
not to the bodies in the graves. He is not the keeper of dust, but he 
is the preserver of souls, and giveth each a body as it pleaseth him. 

Accepting the spiritual theory on Scriptural grounds, it may be 
enforced on rational or scientific grounds, but their elaboration is un- 
necessary. Evidently, the scientific spirit is antagonistic to a physical 
resurrection. Keason is against it; faith only can conquer reason, 
because it must if the natural theory is accepted. No such embar- 
rassment environs the acceptance of the spiritual theory. Reason 
pronounces it tenable; revelation assures us that it is certain. A 
"spiritual body" for the soul is not an unscientific thought, since 
such a body is in essential sympathy with the soul, as indeed it is of 
the same eternal constitution. A belief in the spiritual body is as 
rational as a belief in the soul. One agrees with the other. Again, 
the necessity of the spiritual body is a scientific necessity. The law 
of continuity, which has its fittest illustration in life, requires the as- 
sociation of the spirit-body and the soul, as co-partners in the life of 
the soul from its beginning through all eternity. When the natural 
body falls, the continuity of life is broken and paralyzed ; but, inas- 
much as the continuity of real life is not a physical resultant, nor 
dependent on physical conditions, it is secured by conscious spiritual 
existence in another world. The spiritual body takes the place of the 
natural, and secures continuity ; it secures it by anticipation of the 
spiritual body ; it secures it by an actual realization or possession of 
the spiritual body. 

With the manner in which the spiritual body is provided, whether 
the soul organizes it out of its own materials, or transforms the sur- 
rounding elements of the spiritual world into a suitable body, or whether 
God prepares one independently of the soul's agency and activity, 
or whether it abides with the soul in this life as an undeveloped or 



602 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

unused body, and remains quiescent until the great day, when it as- 
sumes an active relation to the soul, we have nothing to do. The 
fact of a spiritual body is all that must engage our attention. That 
the resurrection, or the standing again of the soul in a spiritual body, 
will occur at the end of the world we sincerely believe. We must, 
therefore, repudiate every theory that holds that the resurrection takes 
place at death, and every theory that has not for the subject of the 
resurrection some kind of a body. Touching the doctrine we follow 
no teachers, save Christ and the apostles; touching revelations, no docu- 
ment has any authority save the New Testament; and, touching theories, 
they all vanish in the presence of the monumental representation of the great 
truth made by the apostle Paul. 

Between death and the resurrection a period of unknown leDgth 
elapses, during which disembodied souls are in a state of conscious 
existence, and engaged in occupations either congenial or otherwise, 
patiently waiting for the re-embodiment which the resurrection will 
confer. Where are the disembodied souls during this period? Are 
the righteous in heaven, and the wicked in hell ; or, do they occupy 
an intermediate place, which is neither heaven nor hell, except in spirit 
and indications ? This is the next problem. 

Prior to the study of the problem, the existence of an "unseen 
universe," or a world back of, different from, and productive of .the 
visible universe, must be noted. The immortality of the soul and the 
resurrection of the dead conjoin in the affirmation of another universe. 
The New Testament is the testimony to its existence. It is a sphere 
of angels, fallen and unfallen, of spirits redeemed and punishable, 
and it is the theater of God's infinite enterprises of grace, wisdom, 
and power. In that universe he dwells, and it will endure forever. 
"The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are 
not seen are eternal." Out of it come the angels who minister to 
the heirs of salvation ; out of it come the devils who seek a dwelling- 
place in men ; out of it came the Son of God, and into it he returned ; 
out of it came the voice that was heard at the baptism of the Savior, 
and from it comes the Spirit that reproves the world of its iniquity ; 
into it looked the dying Stephen and the holy martyrs, and the race 
in its swift march to the tomb gazes wistfully toward it. That unseen 
universe embraces heaven and hell ; the intermediate world, if there 
is any, and the final world, of which no doubt can exist. 

Not a few theologians hold to the idea of an immediate entrance 
at death of the sanctified soul into the highest heaven, and of the un- 
repentant soul into the deepest hell. Nor can it be denied that some 
passages of Scripture easily and naturally incline to that view of the 
future state. To the doctrine of an Intermediate World there are 



ERRORS IN THEOLOGY. 603 

some objections that, though not necessarily fatal to it, must be re- 
moved, or explained, before it can be fully accepted by all the read- 
ers of the Scriptures. The doctrine itself is the foundation of many 
errors in theology, or the root of heresies and fancies not at all com- 
patible with an intelligent Christianity. Granted an intermediate 
world, and the Roman Catholic may plausibly preach his doctrine of 
purgatory; the Spiritualist may proclaim his idea of progression 
and moral discipline and preparation in the future life; the Univer- 
salist can apparently prove the final salvation of all mankind if he is 
allowed an intermediate, half-way place of preparation ; the New 
Theology can flourish its dogma of a second probation, and transfer 
Gospel conditions to the disembodied life of man ; and so the most 
pernicious errors are possible from the assumption of an intermediate 
world. Let it be understood that the soul at death ascends to heaven 
or descends to hell, and there is no room for any of these errors. 
This would be a great gain to theology. But, in investigating a 
truth, the probability that error may spring out of an interpretation, 
or theology may be more or less affected by it, can have no positive 
influence on the honest seeker after the truth. No doctrine of the New 
Testament has failed to awaken criticism, or suggest objections, or 
produce positive errors in interpretation. From the doctrine of the 
Incarnation have emerged Monophysitism and Eutychianism ; from 
the Eucharist, transubstantiation and consubstantiation ; from the Fore- 
knowledge of God, predestination, denial of human freedom, and de- 
nial of contingencies ; from the Atonement, election and reprobation ; 
from the Trinity, Unitarianism, Swedenborgism, and infidelity. Ob- 
jections to doctrines revealed, and to be known by revelation only, are 
of little weight with minds who discern the truth of revelation. 

It may be made against the doctrine of the intermediate world 
that it partakes of the materialistic spirit of the Homeric theology 
and the Judaic revelations. The ancient Jew, while intending to be 
spiritual, was practically a materialist, and clothed truth in physical 
forms. By him the future was conceived under material aspects, from 
which he could scarcely deliver himself, even when the spiritual view 
was exclusively enforced. To him sheol was as literal a place as the 
grave ; the one for the body, the other for the soul ; and the one re- 
mained in its place so long, and no longer, as the other in its place. 
Both the grave and sheol are intermediate abodes, from which both 
body and soul will be delivered. Naturally enough, this view found 
its way into the theology of the Christian Church, and even Christ 
and the apostles in their teachings employed the terms that repre- 
sented the Jewish thought, and gave countenance to it. It is certain, 
also, that the Homeric theology contributed its terms and teachings 



604 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

to Christianity to such a degree that it has been surmised that the 
under-world idea is Greek or pre-Christian, and not definitely the 
product of inspiration. Both the Jews and the Greeks had an es- 
schatology of their own, different in important particulars, and yet 
agreeing in those things that constitute the essential ideas of a the- 
ologic view of the future. Both pointed out the immortality of man ; 
"both indicated the happiness of the good and the wretchedness of* the 
ungodly in the next life ; both foreshadowed an intermediate world 
of disembodied spirits; and both prophesied final rewards and retri- 
butions through a judicial process at an eternal tribunal. This shows 
that the truth had been partly revealed even to Homer as well as to 
Moses; but Christianity was needed to bring these partly revealed 
truths to light. Hence, a similarity of teaching between Christ and 
Homer, and between Christ and the prophets. From the materialism 
of the Greek and the Hebrew conception of the future state Jesus 
immediately separated himself, emphasizing the spiritual character of 
future rewards and punishments, and dissolving the connection be- 
tween sheol and the grave. In Christianity the grave disappears ; 
sheol is transformed into hades; and hades fades finally into a fixed 
eternity. This is the progress of thought in the Scriptures, or a 
passing from materialistic views under the old dispensation to the ex- 
clusively spiritual under the new. It can not be maintained, there- 
fore, against the Christian idea of an intermediate abode, that it is 
essentially Homeric and Jewish, and therefore ought to be abandoned ; 
for it is Homeric and Jewish preliminarily only, and not essentially. 

Sometimes it is suggested that the Intermediate World in its social 
conditions and relations can not be different from this world, for it 
seems to be the abode of joy and sorrow, and of mixed phenomena of 
life ; but if so there is no necessity for such a world. If the world- 
life there is a reproduction or continuance of the world-life here, it 
must be a life of alternate hopes and fears, of liabilities and surprises, 
of progress and discovery, without any positive settlement of those 
religious questions that engage the anxious thought of the race here. 
Such a view arises from a misapprehension of the intermediate world, 
which is represented in an entirely different aspect in the Scriptures. 
It is nowhere declared to be a reproduction of this life. It is ev- 
erywhere represented to be the beginning of heaven to the righteous 
and the dawn of ,hell to the wicked; it is heaven to the one and 
hell to the other. 

The positive Scriptural arguments for the intermediate world are 
almost complete. The Old Testament scarcely gets beyond the inter- 
mediate world ; this is in harmony with its character as an incipient reve- 
lation. When Saul disturbed Samuel, the old prophet shouted, 



THE INTERMEDIATE WORLD. 605 

"Why hast thou disquieted me in bringing me up?" The meauiDg 
may be that he was in a state of satisfaction in the under-world, and 
did not wish to be connected again with earthly scenes or events. 
The word sheol, used sixty-five times in the Old Testament, can have 
no other meaning than that of the intermediate abode of souls wait- 
ing for the resurrection. It has been displaced in the New Testa- 
ment by the word hades, which it is impossible to believe refers to any 
other than an intermediate place of the dead. David says (Acts 
ii, 27), "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hades;" here he looks 
to a deliverance from the intermediate abode. Paul asks (I Cor. 
xv, 55), " O, hades, where is thy victory?" Victory over, or rescue 
from the under-world, is the meaning. John represents Christ (Rev- 
elation i, 18) as saying, "I am alive for evermore; and have the 
keys of hades and of death." He proposes to unlock the gates of 
the intermediate world and bid all come forth. The final disposition 
of hades is thus (Revelation xx, 14) indicated : "And death and 
hades were cast into the lake of fire." This is extinction of hades. 

The intermediate world must necessarily consist of two depart- 
ments, the one for the righteous, the other for the wicked. So we 
find it in the Scriptures, Paradise standing for the former and Ge- 
henna for the latter. Dr. L. T. Townsend speaks of the one as 
Paradise-Hades, and of the other as Gehenna-Hades, a division 
clearly justified by the New Testament. Jesus (John xiv, 2) said 
unto the disciples, "I go to prepare a place for you," intimating 
that the final heaven is not yet ready for saints, and possibly will 
not be ready until the resurrection. Peter (Acts ii, 34) said in his 
Pentecostal sermon, "For David is not ascended into the heavens," 
intimating a waiting for the heavenly life. To the thief on the 
cross Jesus said, "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise," or 
hades ; and in his parable of the rich man and Lazarus he pictures 
the latter in Abraham's bosom and the former in gehenna in torment. 
"Abraham's bosom" can only be understood as a temporary resting- 
place of the saved, while gehenna is the temporary abode of the un- 
forgiven. In that wonderful description of the judgment-scene 
(Matt, xxv, 31-46), we read of final rewards and punishments, 
but it does not take place until ilie end of the world, or ' ' when the 
Son of man shall come in his glory." According to this scene, heaven 
and hell will not be opened until after the judgment at the end of the 
world. This is more decisive than any thing else in the New Testa- 
ment that in their disembodied state the dead are in an interme- 
diate world. 

Less elaborate, but hardly less explicit, are other passages relat- 
ing to the temporary character of gehenna and the final passage of 



606 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

its inhabitants into lower conditions of suffering and punishment. 
Peter (II Peter ii, 4) writes, "For if God spared not the angels 
that sinned, but cast them down to hades, and delivered them into 
chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment" etc. ; and Jude, 
sixth verse, rehearses the same fact; both implying that the fallen 
angels and wicked spirits are held like prisoners for judgment, and 
will be brought forth from the prison-house, or gehenna, at the last 
day to receive sentence of punishment that will never be revoked, 
and to be suffered in hell or the deeper abode prepared for the devil 
and his angels/ 

The revelation of an intermediate abode is satisfactory ; the neces- 
sity of such an abode is involved in the revelations themselves. The 
relation of the resurrection to hades is conspicuous ; the one involves 
the other. The disembodied soul, waiting for its spiritual body, re- 
mains in hades, until clothed with its house from heaven, a building 
of God, and enters its final abode when so clothed and prepared. 
If the disembodied soul, represented as " naked," is fitted for heaven, 
and has ^been there since death dissolved its connection with the 
body, there is no need of the resurrection; but if the disembodied 
soul is in an imperfect state, and must be clothed with a spiritual 
body before it can enter heaven or hell, its occupancy of an interme- 
diate abode, or waiting-place, is a necessity. 

Moreover, the Judgment-day presupposes an Intermediate World. 
If souls at death enter their final abode the necessity of the judgment 
at the last day is overruled ; but if they remain in waiting for a 
spiritual body and for judgment the necessity of final judicial decrees 
is apparent. Whatever may have been the views of the Christian 
Church touching these matters, certain it is that an intermediate 
world exists, and man's relation to it is as has been indicated above. 

In a previous paragraph incidental reference is made to the theory 
of a second probation, or probation in the next life. We pronounced 
it an error, and shall now assign the reason therefor. Neither in the 
Jewish nor in the Christian Church has the thought of another pro- 
bation been regarded otherwise than as heretical, as contrary to the 
fundamental revelations, and, therefore, to be rejected and denounced. 
In both the [Jewish and the Christian Church there have been, as 
there are now, those who for one reason and another feigned to fore- 
see, as they glanced future ward, renewed chances of escape from the 
consequences of sin, and additional opportunities of salvation. Uni- 
versalism has pressed this feature of eschatology with enthusiasm, but 
not with ability, upon the attention of the public mind. In these 
days such thinkers as Canon Farrar, Dr. Dorner, Newman Smyth, 
Henry Ward Beecher, and others of Protestant and orthodox tenden- 



A SECOND PROBATION UNNECESSARY. 607 

cies, have espoused the theory, and are setting it forth with that 
skill that characterizes their theological work in general, and creating 
a suspicion that it may possibly be well-founded in the Scriptures. 
It is not, as a dogma of Universalism, that it deserves notice; but, 
as a theory of Protestant thinkers, it can not be ignored. 

It is alleged in its favor that infants, dying as such, have not 
passed through a probation, and, inasmuch as probation is related to 
character, they must undergo its liabilities and discipline in the next 
life. This is pure speculation ; it is not revelation. It is faulty in 
that it requires the intermediate world to be essentially in its moral 
conditions what the- present world is, for probation involves just 
such conditions as environ human life here. The intermediate 
world is nowhere represented as a probationary world! This remark 
also applies to the suggestion that the heathen have not had a Gos- 
pel chance in this life, and it must be afforded them in the next life. 
No one is on probation there, either infants because they were taken 
from probation here, or heathen because the Gospel idea of probation 
was unknown to them. Paul shows that the heathen, ignorant of 
the Gospel here, shall not be judged by it there. No Gospel probation 
here, no Gospel responsibility there ; this is the Gospel. The Apostle 
Peter (I Peter iii, 18-20) is considered by Farrar, Dorner, and others, 
as a second probationist, whereas in the passage referred to it is evi- 
dent that even if another probation should be granted to the ante- 
diluvians it would avail nothing in their behalf, and would result in 
no improved chance of salvation. Let it be granted that Christ 
preached the Gospel in the intermediate world, and that it was heard 
throughout hades by all the inhabitants thereof; what avails it? He 
never went there but once on such a mission, and it failed ; he has 
not instituted a ministry to proclaim the Gospel in his name to the 
intermediate world; the Gospel he preached was one of comfort to 
the righteous, and of condemnation to the wicked, and no change 
was produced in that world by his temporary ministry. If the pas- 
sage is of worth in this connection it proves that a second probation 
to the ungodly will be as ineffectual as the first, and hence there is 
no sound reason for another probation. 

Consulting the Scriptures, which bear directly upon the subject, 
they are clear in their repudiation of a theory that in its ethical as- 
pects can not promote human welfare or the prospects of eternal 
salvation. Paul (II Cor. v, 10) affirms that "we must all 
appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may re- 
ceive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, 
whether it be good or bad." The decisions of the judgment-day will 
be based on the first probation, and not on any subsequent probation, 



608 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

if there is any. In that judgment-scene recorded by Matthew (xxv, 
31-45) the decisions are based wholly on the events of this life, and 
no reference is made to an intermediate probation. These alone are 
sufficient to dispose of the heresy of another probation. The inter- 
mediate world is not probationary like the present world, but it 
is a type of the eternal world into which all finally go. It is 
not like the present, but like the eternal, world. It is the eternal 
world. 

Closely associated with the doctrines of this chapter thus far 
considered are others of no little importance and bound up in the 
miscellany of the "last things." We refer to the Millennium, the 
Second Coming of Christ, and the expiration or consummation of the 
Christian dispensation. 

That there will be another advent of the Lord, most, though not 
all, Bible interpreters concede. Among the majority of believers, the 
certainty of a second advent is no more held in suspense than the 
fact of a first advent. Indeed, from a priori considerations, there 
were more improbabilities of the first advent happening as recorded, 
than that a second advent should take place in the manner and for 
the purpose specified in Holy Writ. But, while most accept that in- 
terpretation which allows a second visitation of our Lord to the earth, 
all are not agreed as to the time, manner, significance, or purpose of 
the event, and therefore it can hardly be expected of us to furnish 
an interpretation which will reconcile all differences and unite all in 
one opinion. Still, we venture to lay before our readers an under- 
standing of the Word which seems to contain less difficulties than any 
other, and, on the whole, that which satisfies us. 

It might be remarked in passing, that there are those who have 
eliminated all Second Adventism from their creed, on the ad captan- 
dum ground that the Scriptures do not indicate the thought of Christ's 
return to the earth in the future, for any purpose whatever. There 
are others who construe the Scriptures bearing in this direction in a 
figurative sense, denying the personal reappearing of our Lord, and 
contending that his spiritual presence is a sufficient fulfillment of the 
prophetic advent. Contrary to this position, Swedenborg has taught 
that Christ is to come again into the world in his Word, as he once 
came in the flesh. But the word-coming of the Lord — no less than 
his spirit-coming — fails to satisfy believers in a personal advent; and 
it is questionable if any other than a literal, visible, bodily, personal 
coming of the Lord is a coming at all. A spiritual, or word-coming, 
can not be any thing more than a qualified, representative coming, 
which is very different from a personal coming. 

Much, perhaps the greater, interest centers in the chronological 



THE THEORY OF PRE-MILLENNIANISM. 609 

aspects of the question, and this because all correlative questions are 
dependent upon the settlement of its chronology. 

Respecting the chronological phase of the subject, two theories 
have prevailed in the Church since the apostolic age, each eloquently- 
advocated by peerless men. The theory of pre-millemiianism, or the 
advent of the Lord prior to the millennium, and for the purpose of 
introducing it, is very ancient, and has for long periods of time been 
in the ascendant in the conception of Christian people. Having the 
right of way in the realm of Christian thought, its authority has not 
been strongly disputed and has been almost silently accepted as the 
only possible construction of the Scriptures, by the Church at large. 
Singularly enough, the theory has been traced back to the Jews, who, 
taught by the prophets, entertained a belief in the future glory of 
the earth, and, along with it, the cognate doctrine of the millennium. 
Among the early Christian fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenseus, and Ter- 
tullian held to Chiliasm with a firm grasp, and suggested the thought 
that Christ would have a residence at Jerusalem and reign over the 
earth. Chiliasm bore in the earliest times a materialistic stamp, 
growing out of the disposition of the fathers to read the Scriptural 
representation of the Advent in a strictly literal manner. They did 
not hold to a spiritual-coming or a word-coming of the Lord, but to 
a personal coming, and affixed the time for his appearance at some 
point this side of the millennium. While later Christian thought has 
stripped the doctrine of its materialism, such modern men as Christ- 
lieb, Lange, Olshausen, Van Oosterzee, Chalmers, Alford, Home, 
Trench, Ellicott, Mcllvaine, Bedell, and Winthrop, adhere to the ad- 
ventism of their fathers, and join in support of a pre-millennial faith. 
John and Charles Wesley have been likewise summoned as witnesses 
to the Scriptural soundness of the theory of pre-millennianism. With 
this array of authorities, ancient and modern, supporting, and with 
this chandelier of lights illuminating the theory of pre-millennianism,- 
it may seem presumptuous to contend for another view, or assume the 
possibility of another construction. 

On the other hand, there is the theory of post-millennianism, or 
the return of the Lord after the millennium, at the close of the 
world's history, and for purposes entirely disconnected with the mil- 
lennial state. 

It is the statement of Dr. Nast that post-millennianism is popular 
in the Methodist Episcopal Church ; and, excepting a few honored 
names, our standard writers are on this side of the question. Dr. 
Whedon says, "The millennium first, and then the second advent." 
Dr. Raymond holds the same conclusion. Bishop Merrill likewise 
contends for it in a masterly monograph. 

39 



610 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Without further stating the differences between these theories, or 
invoking the approval of Christian authorities, we propose to examine 
the relation of the advent to the millennium, which will involve two 
questions: 1st. What is the Millennium? 2d. What is the Advent? 
If these questions can be answered satisfactorily, or rather, if we can 
read the Gospel between the lines, it will require but a moment to 
assign the advent its chronological place in the history of time. 

1st. What is the Millennium? The answer to this primary ques- 
tion involves a few intermediate considerations, such as those respect- 
ing its manner of introduction, the signs accompanying it, and its 
duration. It may be well to remember that the word "millennium," 
like the word "sacrament," and other Church words, is not in the 
Scriptures; but, unlike those other words, it rests upon a single pas- 
sage for its authorized use. Etymologically, the word is derived 
from mille, a thousand, and annus, a year ; and, when taken together, 
it signifies a thousand years. It implies simply a definite duration, 
without involving the events or conditions of the period ; and yet, 
because John in the Apocalypse alludes to a millennial bondage of 
Satan, and a millennial reign of martyrs, the fascinating doctrine of a 
millennium, in which Christ will personally reign on earth, has been 
constructed and popularized in every conceivable form. But if it 
can not be supported by parallel passages, as no one will pretend it 
can be, he must not be subjected to criticism who says that such a 
millennium is a fiction. To this conclusion the post-millennialist is 
logically carried. 

But, waiving any etymological exception, w 7 hat is the millennium 
in the apocalyptic sense ? For, without controversy, the millennium 
of John, the thousand-year period of the exile of Patmos, is regarded 
as the most definite of any of his statements on the subject. Turn to 
the twentieth chapter of Revelation, the only millennial chapter in 
the Book, and these particulars are noted : 1. Satan is confined in the 
bottomless pit for a thousand years ; 2. Beheaded ones live again and 
reign with Christ a thousand years. Study the chapter as closely as 
one will, and these are the net particulars, the only allusions in it 
touching the millennial state. 

We will be pardoned if we express surprise at the omission of 
certain statements which should have been made, if the personal 
reign of Christ on earth were involved in the millennium. It is not 
stated that Christ reigns on earth, nor that he descends to the earth, 
nor that the beheaded ones, now alive again, who reign with Christ, 
reign on the earth. The most liberal, and at the same time the most 
literal, rendering of the enigmatical chapter foreshadows the resurrec- 
tion of the martyrs in advance of the general resurrection of the race, 



EARTH-SIDE OF THE MILLENNIUM. 611 

and that they reign with Christ, where Christ is, a thousand years 
longer than the other pious dead. Christ is in heaven, and has been 
reigning there since his ascension ; and that class of worshipers, be- 
headed for the testimony of Jesus, enter sooner upon the eternal 
reward than the majority of Christ's followers. This is the first resur- 
rection, and blessed is he who has a part in it, because it is in ad- 
vance of the general resurrection. Christ does not reign with risen 
martyrs on earth, but the risen martyrs reign with Christ in heaven. 
Thus the millennium of John has a heaven-side to it. 

The earth-side of the millennium has respect to the bondage of 
Satan, and in this we are greatly interested. In fact, we are to deal 
only with the millennium as it affects the earth or human condition 
upon it. Satan is in chains ; the earth has unexpected, uninterrupted 
rest from his reign. Sin measurably disappears, it being under 
Heaven's ban. What is left of it is the utterance of unexpelled, in- 
nate depravity, the moving of the pent-up sinful tendencies of the 
soul, like the fires of an active volcano. But these fires will at last 
subside, and every crater will be cold. There can be sin without 
Satan, but the great instigator of sin, the great leader of the world's 
mischief and the great progenitor of the world's sorrow will be ab- 
sent, unrepresented, save by Christ-abandoned souls; sinful enter- 
prises will lag, sins themselves will decay; tribes of men will covet 
the best civilization, and the hemispheres will echo with the voice of 
love — a grand opportunity for extending the sway of the Gospel. 

It will be extended ; the hindrances will disappear before the her- 
alds of the cross ; nations will be born in a day ; peace will be univer- 
sal ; skepticism will retire to a cave ; Bacchus will seek some other 
planet to ply his vocation of ruin ; heathen idols will fall from their 
shrines ; heathen temples will be vacated forever ; Christendom will 
embrace the whole earth ; all hearts will pulsate with Christian joy, 
and all lips tremble with Christian praise. Such a period of moral 
supremacy, of the authority of moral law, the prevalence of Gospel 
influence, and the disarmament of Satanic rule will come and con- 
tinue for a long period. If this is the millennium of the Apocalypse, 
as it seems to be, then is it in harmony with the millennium of the 
entire Bible, and equally in harmony with the post-millennianism of 
some of the ablest thinkers of the day. 

To make sure, however, what this millennium is, let it be an- 
alyzed. 1. It signifies a political millennium. By this we mean the 
disappearance of all obnoxious and despotic forms of government, and 
the substitution of all noble and conserving exhibitions of civil power. 
Monarchies, aristocracies, nobilities, tyrannies of every sort shall sub- 
side, and a democratic form of government will obtain everywhere. 



612 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

This is not a dream, for a millennium that would not regenerate civil 
authority, and give to the nations the most approved forms of govern- 
ment, would be sadly deficient in its influence on rulers and public 
men. Besides, the tendency of every enlightened government is 
toward a republic, and the world anticipates the subsidence of all op- 
pression and all tyranny. The millennium must be 'political. 

2. There will be a scientific millennium. By this we mean the 
spread of knowledge and the reign of truth among all peoples. Ig- 
norance must vanish. The mind of man must expand, and mystery 
must no longer be the apologetic word for ignorance. The laws of 
nature must be known, and the flag-staff of light must be planted on 
the highest summit of truth. The world must not ask a question in 
the realm of the Finite which it can not answer. Science is to have 
a millennium, a great perpetual triumph in its own field of existence. 
Astronomy, geology, philosophy, chemistry, putting off their swad- 
dling clothes, will become giants and tread the earth in conscious 
power, subduing all intractable things to themselves, or, like new- 
made suns, career through the heavens and illuminate the world. 

3. It implies a religious millennium. Of this we have spoken, 
but let us not forget that the Gospel will not be surpassed in the 
broadness of its triumphs by either government or science. It will be 
preached everywhere, believed everywhere, and reign everywhere, 
changing the moral complexion of the race, touching the dead heart 
of humanity into life, and breathing into the souls of men the im- 
pulses of heaven. The Gospel will be supreme in the world, and the 
promises of the prophets will be realized in the regeneration of the 
family of man. We can not over-state the extent or comprehend the 
glory of the triumph of the Gospel in the period of its unresisting 
progress. 

What is the relation of this millennium to the others ? These 
three millenniums are one, and are to occur simultaneously. One can 
not exist without the other. They are not independent, but co-exist- 
ent, millenniums. We have been in the habit of emphasizing the re- 
ligious aspect of the millennium, and regarding other conditions, 
political and scientific, as incidental, or the outgrowth of the Gospel 
reign ; but certain it is that if not synchronous in their existence, the 
millenniums are so related that they can not be far apart. Each as- 
sists the other, and each shares the glories of all. It is trinity in 
unity, applied to the millennium. 

Guided solely by the apocalyptic chapter, we should say that this 
three-fold millennium compasses in its duration the period of a thou- 
sand years. We are sorry to say it ; we prefer to say it will have 
no end, and that it will continue until Gabriel shall announce the 



THE ULTIMATE MILLENNIUM. 613 

termination of time. But John plainly intimates a limited millen- 
nium, which, we think, is in accordance with the duration of the 
Bible millennium in general and with post-millennianism in particular. 

Accepting a millenuial condition limited to a thousand years, the 
decisive question now is, What has the Second Advent to do with 
such a millennium ? Is not such a millennium, transcendently glori- 
ous as it must be, possible without the intervention of Christ's per- 
sonal presence on earth ? Are the two inseparable ? Let us give heed 
to the reasons that may be urged against the necessity of the advent 
at this juncture of the world's history. 

Such a millennium as we have described, consisting of perfect 
forms of civil government, of the dawn of universal science, of Gos- 
pel successes and illuminations, is the ultimate purpose of the Gospel. 
This new condition of earth-life is just what the Gospel promises shall 
exist and what it proposes to secure. The triune millennium will be 
launched upon the open sea of human life by the Gospel, and will be 
a result of the Gospel. Nowhere is it stated that it is to be intro- 
duced by the appearing of the Lord, or by his reign upon the earth, 
but rather by the aggressive and assimilating power of the Gospel. 
Micah says: "But in the last day it shall come to pass that the 
mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the tops of 
the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills ; and the peo- 
ple shall flow unto it." The prophet here alludes to the universal 
triumph of the Gospel through the Church. Jeremiah says: "And 
they shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every man his 
brother, saying, Know the Lord ; for they shall all know me, from 
the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord." Here is 
universal knowledge of God through the Gospel. Habakkuk says : 
" For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the 
Lord, as the waters cover the sea." This is always interpreted to sig- 
nify the triumph of Christianity in the earth. But it is needless, in 
support of this opinion, to quote from a Book with which all are 
familiar. 

If these millennial conditions can not be produced by the Gospel, 
or if it does not tend to establish them, then its mission is a failure, 
or its mission is not what we have assigned it. If the ultimate of the 
Gospel is not the millennium, it is something else. What is it? It 
must be something short of it, for it can not be any thing beyond it, 
or any thing that will parallel it. Conceiving that the ultimate of the 
Gospel is any thing less than a millennial condition, its mission is 
tentative, insignificant ; its hold upon us must be feeble, and our hold 
upon it exceedingly light. 

But it must appear to all that, finally realized or not, the ten- 



614 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

dencies of the Gospel are in the direction of the millennium, and it 
is preparing the world for a better condition. Prophets sing of an 
age of peace, apostles tell it is forthcoming, and Christ saw triumph 
from afar. It can not be denied that the Gospel, as an operating 
factor in the world's progress, has changed governments, and is in its 
very constitution opposed to oligarchies, despotisms, monarchies, and 
all forms of power which oppress men. The Gospel is the Guy 
Fawkes under tyranny, and as it explodes doubtful forms of govern- 
ment, and its teachings are incorporated in the civil life of man, 
democracy must prevail. It will prevail. France has yielded to the 
millennial impulse already, Spain is in perpetual ferment on account 
of it, and Europe is on the verge of a continental republic. 

In the realm of science, its effect is no less significant. It tells 
of light chasing away darkness, of midnights sinking out of sight in 
the meridian glare of perpetual day. It tells of the dawn of knowl- 
edge, prophesying the period of emancipated intellects and the wide- 
spread reign of truth. 

Religiously, its power has always been supreme. It melts the 
chains of sin, and then transforms the sinner into a believer and the 
transgressor into a worshiper. It molds unmolded characters, and 
saves unsaved souls. These are its tendencies and these its works. 

Now, if the millennium be the ultimate of the Gospel, then must 
it be reached by the Gospel, or it is attempting an achievement on 
an insufficient basis, and contemplating a result which, however much 
it may promote, it can not realize, in which case it must be set down 
as a failure. • 

Still greater and more shameful must be the failure, if the millen- 
nium is the ultimate of the Gospel, and Gospel agencies are suffi- 
cient to produce it, and yet some other agency must finally be 
employed to precipitate it on the world. We can not resist the con- 
viction that the Gospel has inherent power to accomplish its own 
purposes, that it gravitates toward success, and that Omnipotence alone 
can turn it back from its appointed destiny. This is different from, 
it is not even kindred to, that transcendentalism of Germany which 
allows to truth a self-propagating and self-operating power, and that it 
is independent of external agency for its triumph. The Gospel will 
not propagate itself; it must be preached. But its agencies, we are 
constrained to say, when set in motion, are directed by an inspiring 
hand, one certainly sufficient to accomplish its ultimate purposes. 

How has it been in the past? We are prone to attribute the dis- 
appearance of great evils, such as slavery, feudalism, barbarous pun- 
ishments, to the commanding power of the Gospel. Will it not do 
as much for the world in the future as it has in the past? Has it lost 



GRADUAL INTRODUCTION OF THE MILLENNIUM. 615 

its power to cope with evil, its skill and cunning in extinguishing vice, 
or may we not rightfully expect that its long experience and struggle 
with gigantic evils has prepared it for broader aggression and wider 
triumphs? If so, if the Gospel will measure up to our expectations 
in the future, if the edge of its sword is all the keener for the con- 
flicts it has engaged in, and is wielded by more skillful hands in the 
future, — the long delayed millennium will arrive, and turn the noise 
of a sinful world into the echoes of the Redeemer's worship. 

We do not understand from the Scripture that the millennium is 
to be introduced on short notice ; that the world, retiring in wicked- 
ness at night, will awake the next morning in the blaze of a millennial 
day. Such a thing might happen, inasmuch as great Scriptural events 
have happened as suddenly, as the destruction of Sodom, and, per- 
haps, the flood, and it is taught that the general resurrection and the 
second coming of Christ will likely break upon the world as a sur- 
prise, though not without antecedent signs. But it is not probable 
that the millennium will astonish the world by a sudden revolution 
in its condition, or its introduction be distinguished by unexpected 
phenomena, by the sudden collapse of error and the elevation of 
truth. Introduced by the Gospel, it will dawn as the rising of the 
sun, gradually folding up the curtains of the long night of darkness, 
and flooding the earth with its beams of glory. Every thing will, 
point in the direction of a new day ; but it may be difficult to tell 
just when it has begun, and the world may enjoy it a score of years 
before it is aware of its presence. This silent leavening power of the 
Gospel, this quiet approach of the millennium, will be in keeping 
with Gospel methods, and in harmony with its ultimate design. 

In contrast with this moral quietude of the millennium, note the 
noisy, earth-rejoicing and heaven-shouting manner of the second 
coming of Christ. He comes to disturb the existing order, introduce 
confusion in mundane affairs, and, by the suddenness of his coming, 
and its judicial purpose, frustrates the first condition of the millen- 
nium, which is that of peace and glory. 

Now, if the millennium of the Apocalypse is the ultimate of 
the Gospel; if it can be produced by Gospel agencies; and if it, 
is not a revolution, but the moral product of the Gospel, — the con- 
clusion is irresistible that, as yet, there is no necessity for connecting 
Christ's next advent with it. 

To be added to these considerations is this, that in this millennial 
chapter of John there is not the slightest allusion to Christ's personal 
coming in connection with the events described. John does not say 
that Christ will come at that time. He does not even say that the 
chaining of Satan is by Christ, but by an appointed angel from heaven. 



616 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

The reigning of martyrs is with Christ after the resurrection, and, it 
may be inferred, after their ascension into the upper kingdom of 
Christ. They go to him — he does not go to them; so that the mys- 
terious connection of Christ's second coming with the millennium of 
the Apocalypse is the gratuitous work of the imaginative theologian, 
rather than the utterances of the inspired writer. 

This enigmatical millennial chapter suggests a problem, which, if 
satisfactorily solved, will be decisive of the validity of pre-millennian- 
ism. Does it not plainly intimate what shall occur at the expiration 
of the thousand years of universal peace and of the reign of right- 
eousness ? We are in no doubt as to the certainty that the millennium 
expires ; we are in less doubt as to what follows it. Satan is unchained, 
and roams again through the earth, devouring, desolating, as before, 
and involving the nations in battle. Satan's authority is regained, 
and Satan's kingdom has recognition. We dislike to concede such a 
lapse from the millennium, but John teaches it, and we must account 
for it, if we can. 

How explain this disappearance of the millennium? If the Gos- 
pel introduces the millennium gradually, we can conceive of its decline 
gradually, or, for that matter, speedily ; for it is not an uncommon 
thing for the Gospel to lose its grip on the nations, and for countries 
once Gospelized to relapse into heathenism. What is Asia Minor 
to-day ? Few are the Christian Churches within its borders. Yet 
Paul planted the Cross in its cities, and John addressed seven 
Churches there seventeen hundred years ago. The Gospel has almost 
disappeared, and with it its influence. Has it not also lost its influ- 
ence at Jerusalem, where the apostles received the Holy Ghost, and 
from which they went forth to conquer the world for the Master? 
The whole Roman Empire was once won to Christ, but, after Con- 
stantine, it was well-nigh lost to him. Great apostasies may succeed 
great triumphs, great defeats supplant great victories. The millen- 
nium, introduced and fostered by the Gospel, may be succeeded by 
apostasies, far reaching and universal, blotting out all remaining 
Gospel influence in the earth. The Gospel reign ebbs and flows, 
rises and falls, in this world, and it may suffer an eclipse, a decline, 
after a thousand years of joyful triumph. Like a candle which has 
burnt itself out, the millennium expires. The explanation is not 
embarrassing, and all may accept it as definite. 

But, on the supposition that Christ comes in person to set up a 
millennial kingdom, the post-millennial apostasy can not be easily ex- 
plained. He reigns a thousand years — what then ? Does he leave the 
world again, ascend to heaven, and, without a struggle, permit Satan 
to resume ? Or does he have a struggle with the arch-fiend, who drives 



PURPOSE OF THE SECOND COMING. 617 

him off the field and raises his banner in triumph in spite of Christ's 
power? We can not think so. If Christ retires from the earth at 
the close of the millennial period, then must he come again at the 
end of the world to close up its history, in which case he would have 
a third advent, which no one will recognize as taught in the Word. 
He can not come to establish a millennium and then permit it to fail 
in his hands, nor can he come before the end without coming again 
at the end of the world, which involves too much adventism. 

The conviction grows on us that when he comes it will not be 
for the purpose of establishing a millennial kingdom on earth, or to 
conserve any millennial purpose whatever. 

What, then, is the object of Christ's second coming ? Negatively 
considered, the purpose of the next advent is not to assist the Gos- 
pel in evangelizing the world ; it has no reference to the spread of 
the Gospel. His first advent had this in view, and contemplated 
victory without the intervention of a second advent. He came as a 
Savior ; he was the incarnate God, offering to men in his own person 
the fruits of redemption. He does not come again to repeat his first 
work. His second errand has reference to objects distinct from 
those which engaged his attention when he sojourned among the 
Hebrews. In so far as the Gospel kingdom may be vindicated by 
Christ at his second appearing, the two advents will be related; but 
he comes not to organize redemption, but to gather its harvest, and 
deliver the mediatorial throne to the Father. His first coming was 
the introduction of his kingdom; his second coming will witness its 
termination. 

Keeping in mind a discrimination warranted by the Scripture, 
the fogs which have gathered about the subject will rise and be gone, 
and we shall have no difficulty in understanding the order of the events 
of the future: 1. The Gospel and the millennium are associated to- 
gether in the inspired volume, the one as instrumental cause, the 
other as processional effect. 2. The second Advent and the events 
connected with the closing of the world's history, such as resurrection, 
conflagration, and judgment, are associated together as occurring al- 
most simultaneously, or, at least, not far apart. Looking beyond the 
millennium, after its traces have disappeared, and its blessings have 
been submerged in the vices of an apostate race, when sin seems to 
have usurped authority in the earth, we see coming in glory the Son 
of God to administer on the affairs of the world and deliver it over 
to the Father for final disposition. 

If this is the object of his coming, the Scriptures must certainly 
foreshadow it, and to them let us at once turn. 

Concerning the resurrection, Paul, the best sacred eschatological 



618 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

writer, in« his first Corinthian epistle says : ' ' But every man in his own 
order ; Christ the first fruits, afterward they that are Christ's at his 
coming." Here is resurrection at his coming. In his letter to the 
Philippians he says : " For our conversation is in heaven, from whence 
also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change 
our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body." 
Here is resurrection again in connection with his coming; and, with- 
out multiplying references, it must be clear that one object of 
Christ's coming is to raise the dead. 

After the resurrection, what then ? Again confiding in the apos- 
tle of the Gentiles, we hear him say, as he addresses Timothy: "I 
charge thee, therefore, before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ who 
shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing." He affirms that 
judgment takes place at the second coming — no millennium here. 
Again, it is recorded: " For the Son of man shall come in the glory 
of his father with his angels, and then he shall reward every man ac- 
cording to his works." Here are the two events, Advent and Judg- 
ment, connected in the same passage. Paul likewise asserts that 
" when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty 
angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, 
and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ ; when he 
shall come to be glorified in his saints in that day." Here it is af- 
firmed that when Christ shall come he will punish the wicked and 
glorify the obedient. This is not millennium — this is judgment. 

In close connection with these events, Peter tells us that the con- 
flagration of the world, a terrific catastrophe, is to occur and close 
up earth's history. 

Now, if Christ's second coming shall occur simultaneously with res- 
urrection, judgment, and conflagration, as it undoubtedly will, accord- 
ing to the above Scriptures; and if it is established that these three 
great events occur at the end of the world, the post-millennial feature 
of the advent is sustained. Matthew (xiii, 36-43), besides other 
writers, teaches that resurrection and conflagration are among the 
events of the last day, and that Christ's return to the earth is to ac- 
complish these changes in its history. 

Therefore, the second advent will occur at the end of the world — 
not before the millennium ; but, perhaps, ages after it. Pre-millen- 
nianism is the dream of piety; post-millennianism one of the ''cer- 
tainties of religion." 

The end of the world ! The end of time, of the intermediate 
world, and the dawn of the resurrection life, the judgment-day, and 
the opening of the heavens and the hells ! What a period ! What 
events ! What a future ! The Judgment ! Our time-life reviewed ; 



FINAL JUDICIAL DECISIONS. 619 

our eternal choices ratified ; human character evolving into eternal 
destiny. In the face of the Scriptures declaring that the Judgment 
shall occur at the end of the world, it is supreme folly to insist that 
it is revealed at death, for while eternal destiny is shaped by this life, 
and it is irrevocably fixed at death, the judicial sentence will not be 
heard until the great day of the Lord, the day of reckoning with the 
universe. Then all shall know that the Lord is King and the Judge 
of all mankind. 

Heaven ! The soul, clothed with a spiritual body, its house from 
heaven, builded by God, enters to go out no more forever. Angels 
are there ; the good of the ages past are in the fadeless mansions ; 
there is the fruit of the tree of life ; on golden-paved streets the saints 
forever walk ; no trouble disturbs the endless peace of the soul, and 
no discord is heard in the endless songs of the redeemed. Yonder is 
the great throne, white with the light of Him who made the universe ; 
and sitting on it is the form of One who once was nailed to the Cross. 
Redemption is complete ; heaven is gained. 

Hell ! The word is crowded with all the repulsive words of all 
the languages of men. It means darkness, obloquy, banishment, fail- 
ure, tears, sorrow forever. 

These are the doctrines of Christian eschatology. They are con- 
sistent in themselves, in harmony with the highest human interests, 
calculated to hold men in check, and inspire them with awe and a 
love of right. In these revelations Christianity proves itself to be 
from God. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE DYNAMICS OR CHRISTIANITY. 

JAMES WATT told George III. that he was dealing with some- 
thing that kings coveted. Pressed for an explanation of his state- 
ment, he answered with one word — power. Steam power is great; 
the power of gravitation is greater; but the power of Christianity, 
or the secret force of religion, is greatest. This is the power that 
kings should covet, for it is the safety of thrones ; the power that all 
men should seek, for it is the salvation of character. 

The reappearance of Christianity from age to age, since its Founder 
was crucified, is not only a historic fact, but is also significant of cer- 
tain indwelling forces, or sources of perpetuity, the consideration of 
which must necessarily be included in any just estimate of its nature 



620 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

and history. There have been times when the death-knell of the 
Christian religion has been sounded, but invariably it has revived and 
survived, and gone on its way as insensible to the attempts made upon 
its life as though they had not been made. Fires, persecutions, legis- 
lative obstacles have threatened the extinction of the apparently helpless 
cause, and united in an endeavor to overthrow it, but the fires are 
extinct, and its enemies have been consumed by their own flames. 

In this chapter we shall not trace its historic career, or seek to 
explain it as a historic movement ; but it is our purpose to discover, 
if possible, its inherent power, or those internal elements which con- 
stitute it the vitalizing and imperishable product it appears to be. If, 
as Gibbon undertakes to prove, the causes of its historic successes, 
the recognition of which can not be avoided, are largely external, or 
may be credited to the enthusiasm of believers, then it must be re- 
garded as a religion of sentiment only, or superstition. 

Allowing that ecclesiastical machinery may have something to do 
with the propagation of religion, and that it often attracts when the 
truth is apparently powerless, it is clear that unless religion itself is 
in a sense self-propagating, all the machinery in the world can not 
preserve it from ultimate decay. The motive forces of religion are 
so far from being mechanical that, without any mechanism whatever, it 
will live and assert itself If the Church were not in existence, and 
no organization espoused Christianity as the end of its being, Chris- 
tianity would still possess all that inherently belongs to it, and it is 
in its inherent characteristics, and not in its mechanical relations, that 
its power may be detected. 

It may be a little circuitous, but evidently in the right direc- 
tion, to suggest that there is in Christianity the absence of w T hat other 
religions have regarded as essential, which they finally outgrew, or 
which was the cause of their decline. The old Greek paganism was 
a stiff kind of philosophy after all, with little of spiritual elevation in 
it. Love of nature, or natural religion, was the basis of the religious 
cultus in Athens. The personification of nature's forces was in regu- 
lar order both religious and philosophical ; but when the philosophical 
personification ceased the religious deification ceased also. Their le- 
gends, fables, histories, and worships were the outgrowth of a philo- 
sophical desire to recognize in nature the source of all things, or a 
self-begetting principle in the universe ; hence the forces were clothed, 
deified, and received the homage of the people. Instead of personi- 
fying that which is the proper subject of deification, namely, per- 
sonality, they personified that which in no sense is the exponent of 
being. Non-being can not be the figure of being ; hence its personi- 
fication was a piece of philosophical absurdity, which in due time was 



THE SPINAL CORD OF FALSE RELIGIONS. 621 

exposed, and the religion based upon it declined. The form of relig- 
ion, however, long obtained after its vitality had been exhausted and 
its inconsistency was made manifest. 

Not to nature did the Roman go for his religion. Less philosoph- 
ical than the Greek, he was more religious, and in the absence of 
divine direction he turned to humanity for the ideal statue of wor- 
ship, as the Greek had turned to nature. He fell to worshiping de- 
ceased ancestors, and in his long communion with their virtues he 
transfigured the departed and gloried in the invisible. The Greek 
worshiped nature ; the Roman humanity. The Greek adored the 
visible ; the Roman' the invisible. The Greek personified force ; the 
Roman deified human spirits. The religion of the Greek was the re- 
ligion of beauty and power ; the religion of the Roman was the re- 
ligion of human sentiment and dreamy spiritualism. Both were 
without vitalizing properties ; neither was a biological religion ; both 
decayed. 

Equally, the spinal cord of the Oriental religions is as defective in 
strength and as feeble in sensibility as were the paganisms of ancient 
Greece and Rome. Brahminism still preaches the doctrine of the 
transmigration of souls ; Buddhism shouts nirvana as the end of ex- 
istence ; and Mohammedanism loads itself with sensual and supersti- 
tious conceptions of the future life. Meanwhile the evidences of in- 
ternal decay and the absence of the biological principle are patent to 
the students of these religions, which in the future will be regarded 
as relics of religious history, having disappeared as active religious 
forces from the world. 

Whether personified force, or ancestral worship, or transmigration, 
or nirvana, or a lustful heaven be the spinal doctrine of religion, en- 
forced by political, social, or military power, Christianity embraced 
none of them, and is incompatible with all of them. The deification 
of nature is blasphemy ; its forces are the forces of Him who made 
the worlds ; its laws are those of the Supreme Law-giver. Personifi- 
cation signifies the idealizing of character, not the idealizing of force ; 
and Christianity proposes, as a subject of idealizing, the personal 
character of Jesus Christ, the express image of God. Such an ideal- 
izing no other religion ever attempted. More repugnant in a theo- 
logical sense is the Roman idea of religion, or the worship of the 
departed. Not even the angels receive worship. John fell down in 
adoration before a communicating spirit, but was rebuked for his 
idolatry, and commanded to worship God. As to transmigration and 
nirvana, they are the offspring of diseased imaginations and perverted 
beliefs, having no foundation either in reason or revelation. In its 
conceptions of the future life Mohammedanism is a fountain of 



622 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

iniquity to be sealed by the religion it has sought to extinguish. Chris- 
tianity repudiates all religions grounded in philosophical absurdities, 
rooted in metaphysical errors, springing from superstitious soils, or 
bursting forth from the fires of sensuality. What it is not, and es- 
pecially what it has not in common with other religions, it is impor- 
tant to know, and may be ascertained by quiet inquiry. 

Freeing it from things common to other religions, we are prepared 
to consider the " thing-in-itself," or Christianity in its simplicities 
rather than its complexities, in its principles rather than its details 
of operation, in its magnitude and wholeness rather than in its parts. 

I. Christianity is the substance of religious truth. When Hegel 
calls it ''absolute religion," he means that its essence is absolute 
truth. By substance or essence we mean the underlying basis, the 
essentia of religion, without which religion is impossible, and with 
which religion is pow T er. Physical objects have their substance in 
oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, the four primordial ele- 
ments, with the addition of some of the other elements in small pro- 
portions. The four are the essential elements, and constitute physical 
substance. So Religion, dropping its specific name for the moment, 
must have its substance in imperishable truth, or truths, such as 
divine personality, providence, theistic administration, soteriological 
principles, and eschatological facts. These are the essentials of religion. 
Some of them may be found in all religions, but in curious combina- 
tions, in contradictory relations, in traditional masks, and in unrecog- 
nizable forms, and so without vital influence or sovereign power. 
They are like the wheat in the mummy-case, vital during the ages, 
but without growth until rescued and given the sunlight and a true 
soil. In Christianity, religious concepts are rescued from non-devel- 
opment, and appear in all their vitality and sovereignty, as the 
substance of truth. 

In addition to the essentials of religion, there are other ideas, re- 
lated to the primary truths, as the sixty-six elements are related to 
the four principal elements of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and car- 
bon. In Religion, monotheism is a basal idea, reflecting an intelli- 
gent conception ; that is, it differs from the Mohammedan idea of the 
unity of God, which is a by-word of religion rather than its power, 
and from the Jewish conception, which, incipiently correct, had its 
fullest and stateliest manifestation in the dispensation of Christ. The 
early Jewish monotheism was exclusive as a religious faith, Jahveh 
being the God of the Jews only. In the progress of the ages, or 
with the arrival of Christ, the Jewish conception was enlarged, so 
that Jahveh was the God of all nations ; the exclusive faith was suc- 
ceeded by a universal conception of the common fatherhood of God. 



CRYSTALLIZATION OF RELIGIOUS TRUTH. 623 

It was a great reach in religion to step over the primordial bounds 
of belief; but Hebrewism was always inseusibly, and yet gradually 
and surely, making advances toward a higher order of things ; but, 
when prepared for the consummation in the highest truth, it unfor- 
tunately collapsed, and is still defunct. 

In like manner, the ideas of government, law, providence, atone- 
ment by sacrifice, and the future life, initial and germinal in the 
elder Hebrewism, became, under the cultivating and manipulating 
influence of Christianity, forceful ideas in the religious realm, and 
the very substance of a definite and final religion. If Christianity, 
with its inherited, transformed, and revealed truths, is not the "abso- 
lute religion," and has not the substance and essentia of truth, the 
world is without, and must be ever without, such a religion. 

II. In its exponential character, Christianity is the incorporation 
and crystallization of religious truth. Substance alone, however essential 
to being, to truth, to reality, is insufficient ; truth must have objective 
form, visibility, reality. Keligion, as an invisible truth, must emerge 
into religions, or into a particular religion, chosen for the expression 
of the substance-idea; and this has happened in Christianity. It 
stands as the re-embodiment of invisible truth, as Judaism was its 
original embodiment. For instance, in the latter, God dwelt in light 
inaccessible ; in the former, he comes to the front, manifesting his 
personality in a tangible form, voicing his will that the world may 
hear him, teaching truth that the world may know it, and promising 
salvation that the world may be of "good cheer." In Christianity, 
religion passes from substance into form, or substance identifies itself 
with form, the invisible rushing into the visible, — a unique rela- 
tion unknown to other religions. In other religions, substance and 
form are entirely incongruous ; they are paired merely, not fitted to 
each other. Christianity is the form of the essentia of the divine 
substance of truth, as Jesus Christ was the form and image of God. 
Philosophically, it is the religion of substance and form, with an in- 
dissoluble expression in Jesus, the Teacher and Savior. 

What the contents of the form are, it is needless to recapitulate, 
since our readers are supposed to understand what are the general 
doctrines of religion ; and yet, all along from incarnation to ascen- 
sion, including miracles, prophecy, atonement, forgiveness, regenera- 
tion, sanctification, heaven, hell — all that he taught, or left to be 
taught by his apostles — there is the outcropping of the invisible sub- 
stance of truth. Variety in form, that is, in teaching, is consistent 
with unity in substance ; the form, complex or simple, is the 
product of the substance. Divine ideas of law, providence, and re- 
demption, hidden in the substance, composing the substance, become 



624 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

concrete in the form, or the masterpieces of Christianity. Knowledge 
of divine realities, divine programs, divine ideas, the world obtains 
alone through the exponential office of Christianity. It is the only 
religion in which the divine is transparently and exclusively on ex- 
hibition, the only religion that rises above or sinks behind phenom- 
ena, the only religion that manifests the spiritual through the 
empirical, the only religion that makes the unknowable knowable. 
The process of the revelation of substance in form, or the essentia of 
truth in religion, is divine; it is enough that such process takes 
place ; it is enough that the result is known. This, in part, is the 
secret of its power ; it is, in part, the power itself. 

III. The evolutionary spirit in Christianity is the sign of its vitality, 
and the guarantee of its propagating efficiency. The scientific word 
"evolution" is here employed to express the continuous development 
of religious truth from its incipient character in Hebrewism to its com- 
pleted state in the apostolic dispensation. That Christianity is the 
religion of revelation by evolution, that is, by gradual unfoldings, is a 
cardinal doctrine of the book called the Bible. There is no religion 
so evolutionary as Christianity ; there is no religion that is evolution- 
ary, save Christianity ; for, while other religions appeared at once in 
a completed form, like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, and have 
from the first declined and are declining, Christianity was, in a sense, 
a growth from a previous stock, and is in process of development 
still, with the promise and potency of growth that insures its indefi- 
nite expansion in the future. Evolution has fewer illustrations of 
itself, as a law, in nature than in Christianity, for nature has its limits, 
and evolution stops. Nature is what it was ages ago. Nature's laws 
are those imposed upon, or incorporated with, the huge physical 
frame-work called the universe at the beginning. Nature knows no 
change of law, no progress of forms, and repeats its phenomena 
within well-defined and well-known limits. In the zoological de- 
partment of nature, the stability of species very early arrested or 
abruptly terminated any tendency to evolution, and has been a 
stumbling-block in the path of the evolutionist ever since. Nature 
is not the playground of evolution. History is evolutional;, race-life 
is evolutional ; Christianity is evolutional. Nature-evolution is only 
a figure of the greater truth-evolution embodied in Christianity. It 
is conceded that, laying aside the subject of the authorship of the 
sacred books containing the oracles of God, and even forgetting their 
contents, the great book grew like a mammoth tree, requiring at least 
three thousand years for its completion. From Genesis to the Apoc- 
alypse is the path that truth, in its evolutionary stages, made for 
itself. This striking historic development is eclipsed by the evolu- 



JEWISH REVELATIONS OF GOD. 625 

tionary development of the truths themselves, which, faintly adum- 
brated in the earlier worships and teachings, emerge into settled facts 
and doctrines, and become the axioms of the Christian faith. This 
process is so marked, and the truths that have passed through the 
chrysalis state into vital and sovereign forms are so many, that it will 
repay the effort made to glance at them. 

The allusion in a preceding paragraph to the growth of the mono- 
theistic idea may be quoted with force in this connection. The first 
Jewish ideas of God were remote from the completed Christian idea, 
to which they bear only the faintest resemblance. The first Penta- 
teuchal representation of God is that of the Creator, or a being of 
indefinite and illimitable power. Such representation, however nec- 
essary to religion, was preliminary to the riper disclosures of the 
Mosaic administration, and inferior to the hypothecated evidences of 
the divine existence as furnished by Paul to the philosophers of 
Athens. The revelation of a Creator was first in the order of evolu- 
tionary revelations ; as a starting-point it was simple, but the Creator 
stands before us in the majestic utterance of inspiration, like a distant 
mechanician, or worker of matter. Another revelation is needed, to 
relieve the first of its distant and frigid aspects. He comes forth as 
the Ruler, both in heaven and in earth, having all authority, as he 
had all power as Creator. The idea of rulership is suggestive of gov- 
ernment, law, dominion, and subjects, the latter involving relation- 
ship. As Ruler, he is still afar off, and another revelation is required. 
It is given, and God approaches in the form of a Father. To the 
patriarchal mind he was a local deity, as Jupiter to the Greeks, and 
Diana to the Ephesians. The idea that he is the world's Father was 
a late growth. From local limitations it swung loose, taking to itself 
an international complexion, and resulting in the proclamation that 
he is the God of gods, or above every other in heaven and earth. 
This was progress, but there was more to follow. The growth did not 
stop with the extinction of localized or national relations. He must 
be the world's Creator, the world's Ruler, the world's Father, com- 
municating with all his children, which signifies progress in revelation. 
To the multitudes, the early God of the Scriptures communicated 
nothing ; to the Gentile nation, nothing ; to the Jews something, but 
only through their leaders or the priesthood. To the great majority 
of his children, even after they accepted him as the Father, he appeared 
distant as ever, distrustful of individual relationship, and cold as an 
ice figure. He had an austere bearing, and remained away from his 
creatures, or spoke to them only with the voice of thunder. 

In the new dispensation God is Creator, Ruler, Father ; but in 
Jesus Christ there is a Mediator by whom the individual's approach 

40 



626 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

to God is secured, and the distance between the Creator and the 
creature is completely bridged. An immense advance this, but not 
equal to the still later steps of the new dispensation. To the Jewish 
mind God embodied the idea of inexorable justice, without a break 
or flaw in his holy disposition, without the first element of compassion 
for his morally infirm subject. That he was paternal in his care was 
not denied, but for a violated law there remained only the penalty. 
Nature established no bureau of pardon, and Sinai only gleamed with 
fire. Authority, obedience, penalty — these were the awful words of a 
dispensation that they accepted as divine, and under which they grew 
into a disciplined and vigorous people. While in the new dispensa- 
tion these words are not replaced by others, they lose their harsher 
features, and are accompanied by such words as repentance, pardon, 
mercy, and salvation. 

The change or growth in human conceptions was even greater 
than in the nomenclature of the dispensations. God himself, in a sense, 
was growing all the time ; that is, the human conception under revela- 
tion of the truth was a development toward the reality of God. So 
long as he manifested himself in angel-form, or came in thunder and 
flame, or lingered unseen over the mercy-seat, or bivouacked in a 
moving cloud, it was difficult to apprehend any thing more than that 
he was an invisible guide, friendly to men. Even the names of his 
attributes as they were pronounced were almost unmeaning words, 
scarcely symbolical of his mysterious qualities and virtues. Through 
the ages the race walked amid these shadows, and was locked up with 
these ambiguous voices and words. With the dawn of Christianity 
God comes forth as a Spirit, not more bodiless than space and time, 
uttering words that have a meaning, scattering truths that abound 
with life, and shouting to the race to approach the throne. 

In this quiet but effectual way, by this evolutionary process of the 
growth of the divine idea of God in the human mind under the in- 
fluence of spiritual teaching, not the Jew only, but mankind have 
inherited an approximate understanding of the character, relations, 
and purposes of the Supreme Being. Our present knowledge, how- 
ever in advance of the earlier revelations, is still inadequate, because 
incomplete. Agnosticism, science, philosophy, are quarreling over 
such knowledge. Other evolutions in knowledge through a larger 
discernment of revealed truth may therefore be anticipated, until 
agnosticism will have no room for its feet, until science will proclaim 
the divine being with as much assurance as Christianity has always 
proclaimed him, and until philosophy will concede all that religion 
demands. God will develop more and more before our eyes in the 
mirror of the Scriptures, and in his handiwork in the universe. 



EVOLUTION OF MESSIAHISM. 627 

The evolutionary process in the Scriptures is very apparent in the 
growth of the Messianic idea which they contain. This is so plain that 
a lengthy tracing is unnecessary, but it is as marvelous as it is 
plain. Beginning with the promise in Eden that the seed of the 
woman shall bruise the head of the serpent, the idea successively 
appears in all the sacrifices of Israel's migratory life, in all the re- 
ligious institutions of the national period, in the gloom and sunshine 
of every prophetical announcement, and had exact fulfillment at last 
in Jesus of Nazareth. To the earliest Jew, as to the latest, the idea 
itself wore a cloudy dress, and was dimmed still more by the romance 
that enveloped the political hope of the nation ; to one, as to the 
other, the spiritual content of the idea of Messiahship was unseen or 
unappreciated, and upon the national life it was evidently powerless. 
The poetical and political Messiahship of the Jew was all-powerful; 
the spiritual Messiahship came forth like a root out of dry ground, 
and he would have returned it to the ground. Notwithstanding the 
insensibility of the Jewish mind to spiritual ideas, the Messianic idea 
enlarged with the growth of the national idea, and ripened in the 
mildew of the old faith and bore fruit before their eyes in a personal 
and divine Messiah. Looking back over the route of the idea in 
Jewish history, it is not difficult to follow it through all its wander- 
ings; it left its track in the wilderness; it was engraven over the 
doors of temple and synagogue ; it was written in the heart of the 
Pharisaic nation ; it conducted itself step by step through the cen- 
turies, until it made a royal assertion of its meaning on Calvary. Its 
consummation was a personal manifestation ; its spiritual content found 
a dwelling-place in the heart of the Son of Man. 

The Messianic idea, as such, or amplified in the personal charac- 
ter of Jesus Christ, is traveling still ; the Messianic plan is on the 
march ; the Messianic hope is still evolutionary, having in it the 
talismanic purpose of progress, and will develop more and more, un- 
til all generations shall discern its content and appropriate its power. 
Messiahism is a divine growth. Its purpose is not yet fulfilled ; it is 
still misunderstood ; it must be understood and it will be, for the 
eternal years of God are before it for development and sovereignty. 

The eschatology of Christianity is under the same law of develop- 
ment, exhibiting it in even more marked aspects than the theistic 
and Messianic ideas previously considered. The door to speculation 
is open in this region of truth. If clear revelation or specific teach- 
ing is needed at all, it is needed here ; if the motives used from the 
thought of the future life are to be effectual, the teachings of religion 
respecting it should be definite, and free from possibility of miscon- 
struction. In the absence of positive and unequivocal knowledge, 



628 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

other religions took up superstitious conjecture, and loaded themselves 
with visionary and degrading conceptions of the future state. The 
religion of the Bible does not plunge immediately into the depths of 
the subject, or enlighten the truth-seeker with early and satisfactory 
announcements concerning the life beyond, but proceeds slowly and 
cautiously with its hints, turning them gradually into probabilities, 
and finally opening out into well-assured certainties. Important as a 
knowledge of the future life seems to be, the Hebrew religion ad- 
vances hesitatingly, enshrouding even its final testimony with a 
sacred vagueness that allures the soul on, and forever excites its 
curiosity to know more. With the Old Testament alone it has been 
supposed that one would find it difficult to pilot himself safely into 
the eternities. He might, indeed, drift into the protected harbor of 
the Beyond, but his voyage would not be under intelligent guidance, 
or have any more inspiration than that of a sacred dream. He needs 
to know something more than that he must go into eternity. He 
needs to know that definitely; and, while not sharing the view of 
Edward Beecher, that the Old Testament does not establish immor- 
tality, and that the ancient Jew had no hope at all, we confess that 
the fore-gleams of it in the old dispensation are rare and feeble, and 
yet, taken together, give ground for faith. 

The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is as fundamental to 
character as it is to religion. If a fact at all, it is a tremendous 
fact, and religion should echo it in the depths of consciousness until 
the soul, catching the inspiration of the thought, will feel the thrill 
of its immortal being. Judaism, paving the way for a more explicit 
affirmation of the doctrine, is eclipsed by Christianity, which brought 
life and immortality to light. In the ancient Hebrew faith the doc- 
trine of immortality was as black as the robes of a funeral priest ; if 
seen at all, it was seen by twilight ; in the new faith it is a full-orbed 
sun, illuminating human history, and pointing to the everlasting des- 
tiny of the human race. As in the Old Testament the existenceof 
God is not demonstrated, but assumed from the beginning and all 
through the oracles, interpenetrating them with its spirit, so in the 
New Testament immortality is not logically established, but assumed 
and expanded as if known, and on the assumption of its truth are 
built the certainties of future rewards and punishments. In this 
way the doctrine, vaguely taught in Hebrewism, has come to light, 
clearly and sufficiently, in Christianity. 

Concerning the general resurrection, there is the same uncertainty 
in the Old Testament as envelops other eschatological truth. It is 
unsatisfactory, and creates an uneasiness, and sometimes a suspicion 
that the early Hebrew faith was devoid of the doctrine of the resur- 



MAGIC WORDS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 629 

rection. More is wanted than the reader finds in the dusty pages of 
patriarchal history, or in the unrolled parchments of the prophets. 
If Christianity settles any eschatological problem with emphatic as- 
surance, it is this of the resurrection, which carries with it the sov- 
ereign proof of immortality. The resurrection of Christ is the corner- 
stone of Christianity, employed always by the Apostle Paul in proof 
of Christ's divine character, and upon the truth of which Christ himself 
based the future of his religion. Establishing the resurrection of Christ, 
the final resurrection of mankind Paul demonstrates in syllogistic 
form, insisting upon it not more because it may be demonstrated than 
that it has been revealed. It is both a demonstration and a revela- 
tion, and the Church has accepted it with an irresistible persuasion 
of its verity. The distance from Abraham to Paul is great, but it 
has been traveled, and the shout of the last day re-echoes in the ear 
of humanity. Out of the tomb of Machpelah sprang no flower of 
of hope, or at least it sent no fragrance down the ages ; but Paul's 
death-cry shook the sleeping forms of the dead, and with his dying 
hand he wrote resurrection on the gateway of their tombs. 

The doctrine of the resurrection is a mystery ; the fact of resur- 
rection is one of the accepted as it is one of the revealed doctrines 
of Christianity. Of the event itself, its real character, process, and 
purpose, we need to know more, and through evolutionary processes 
it will doubtless be better understood in the days to come than now. 

As to the doctrines of rewards and retributions, or heaven and 
hell, the same evolutiouary process of revelation is observable. From 
dimness, suspicion, and wonder, we grope into transparent concep- 
tions, and industrious statements of truth. Judging by the record, 
it is not evident that Cain had any knowledge of another life, much 
less any suspicion of hell ; but Felix, under the preaching of Paul, 
which was a revelation of judgment to the sensual governor, trembled. 
From Cain to Felix is a long path, but it marks the unfolding of 
truth, and its power on the conscience. Jacob dies, but the death-bed 
scene, beautiful and pathetic, has in it no supernatural glimmer, while 
Stephen sees the heavens open, and Jesus sitting at the right hand 
of God. From Jacob to Stephen is a dusty march, but visions of 
eternal glory break upon the traveler at the end. In the Old Testa- 
ment sheol casts its shadow over the mortal, and finally overtakes and 
overwhelms him ; in the New Testament hades, gehenna, paradise, 
heaven, hell, are the magic words that inspire hope or thrill with 
horror. Two definite termini of life are marked out, the one enticing, 
the other forbidding, the one perennial in its joyousness, the other 
unending in its gloom ; and to these Christianity is ever pointing in 
its promises, appeals, invitations, and threatenings. Respecting the 



630 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

termini Christendom is not in doubt. Some may be in doubt re- 
specting the exact character of the double-headed future as revealed 
by Christianity ; but that there is such a future is the unequivocal 
testimony of Christianity. 

In like manner we might pursue the development of every Chris- 
tian doctrine, from its incipient state through manifold stages, to its 
final exhibition in a completed form in Christianity ; but this is un- 
necessary. 

One or two questions closely associated with the evolutionary 
character of Christianity require a moment's consideration. We have 
traced the evolution of truth in the Old Testament, but not in the New 
Testament ; but it is susceptible of proof that the evolutionary process 
in the latter is even more direct, positive, and assuring than in the 
former. No more attractive or intelligent theme is propounded by 
Christianity than the progress of doctrine in the New Testament, or 
the growth of truth in the inspired forms of the New Testament. 
The assumption of immortality, the ground-idea of all eschatology, 
is so illustrated by the Savior, and so enforced by apostolic argument, 
that naught remains but to proclaim the last words of our religion 
as the truth of demonstration and revelation. 

Christianity is still an evolutionary system of truth, or is yet un- 
der the law of evolution, and ever will be, in its growth and influ- 
ence. Many of its truths are still beyond us. Like Hebrew poetry, 
the spell is upon us when we read them, but the key to their secret 
seems to be lost. That key the future must find. Take the doctrine 
of the second coming of Christ, a thrilling, moving, helpful, but, at 
the same time, a much misunderstood and perverted doctrine. Res- 
urrection, too, needs illumination. The whole field of eschatology needs 
to be plowed again. It will be. Lost keys will be found; hidden 
meanings will be uncovered ; and truth, stately and transparent, 
will be welcomed as it is recognized. Physical science, questioned as 
to the origin of the universe, and the descent of man, quietly replies 
that if its explanation is not valid it will furnish an explanation here- 
after that will be accepted. Physical science, compelled at times to 
confess its failure, promises success in the future. It is scientific, there- 
fore, to promise success hereafter. In this spirit, but with a basis 
for faith in the evolutionary history of doctrinal Christianity, one may 
expect that the future will disclose many of the secrets of truth, and 
that future ages will be witnesses of truths and sharers of revela- 
tions now either unapprehended or unknown. Supernaturalism is 
exhaustless, and, given the ages for its development, it will stand out 
clearer than ever, and supreme in its dominion over the thoughts of 
men. The secret propagating power, or the dynamical element of 



CHRISTIANITY A GEOMETRIC IDEAL. 631 

Christianity consists, therefore, in its evolutionary character, in its exhaust- 
less tendency to development, in its supernaturalism, which eschews 
the common conditions of time and space, and in its inheritance of 
all that is divine. 

IV. In the conception of Christianity as a geometric ideal, or the per- 
fect illustration of the mathematical spirit, is also the key to the discov- 
ery of its dynamical character and power. We shall speak guardedly 
here, since we may be misunderstood. Physical science in its generic 
content is mathematical ; it embraces geometry, algebra, and arithmetic. 
Upon these, or by the aid of these, chemistry, astronomy, physiology, 
botany, and geology are built ; that is, the laws, principles, and conclu- 
sions discovered or established by science, are established by mathe- 
matical methods and in harmony with mathematical principles. Both 
botany and crystallography are mathematical sciences ; that is, botan- 
ical forms are geometric, and the laws of growth, of symmetry, of 
proportion, observed in trees and crystals, are mathematical laws. The 
formation of the topaz and the sapphire, the phyllolactic arrangement 
of leaves on a tree, the elliptical orbits of planets, the laws of reflection 
and refraction of light, the mathematical proportion of gases in liquids 
and solids, demonstrate the spirit and authority of the geometric 
principle in nature. The physical universe is an epitome of mathe- 
matical principles. 

Is the geometric principle purely physical, or limited in its application 
to physical objects ? Is it the property of physical science only, or will 
it explain, support, and defend religious truth? Is physical truth 
the attempted realization of a geometric ideal, and does revealed truth 
fall short of it ? In other words, may Christianity be vindicated from 
a mathematical standpoint? The elder theologians, or those known 
as the fathers, were averse to any thing like a demonstration of divine 
truth, and denied the application of the mathematical test to the 
dogmas of Christianity. Again and again has it been asserted, with a 
painful and pitiful regularity, that the evidence of Christianity is 
moral, and not mathematical, and that, therefore, the certainties of 
religion are moral and not demonstrated realities. In this day of 
physical science and philosophic inquiry, the mathematical test is be- 
ing applied with unsparing energy and frightful haste to all kinds of 
truth, so that some have trembled for the result. To such- a test 
Christianity must submit itself, as the condition of its acceptance, and 
as the surer condition of its triumph, for nature is only an approxi- 
mation to a geometric ideal, while Christianity is its perfect embodi- 
ment or illustration. 

We have waited too long for the acknowledgment of the relation 
of religious truth to the geometric spirit, or the evolution of the 



632 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

geometric ideal in Christianity, and, therefore, the mathematical dem- 
onstration of its certainty ; but the time is at hand to proclaim it. It 
is a singular fact that materialists and evolutionists deride the notion 
of the algebraic principle in matter, the only explanation of their 
derision being the discovered relation of that principle to Christianity. 
Geometry is the key to the universe and the key to Christianity. 
According to the materialist, physical forms are the result of environ- 
ment ; according to a strict knowledge of fact, it is the result of 
mathematical law. Mathematical law is suggestive of supervising in- 
telligence, and in its remote bearings presupposes the theistic princi- 
ple ; hence the virulence with which the geometric idea of nature is 
persecuted. The geometric idea of nature is also the geometric idea of 
Christianity, as we shall now see. Spiritual truth is as geometric to the 
core as any natural truth ; and both stand or fall by this supreme test. 

The most perplexing doctrine of the Scriptures — the Trinity — is an 
ample illustration of the geometrical idea in Christianity. It in- 
cludes three things : (a) Substance ; (b) Form ; (c) Influence. The 
Father is the Substance, or invisible essence; the Son is the Form, 
the express image, of the Substance ; the Spirit is the Influence, or 
procession from the Father through the Son, or from the Substance 
through the Form. Precisely these three, and no more, co-exist in 
every created thing ; the Trinity is the geometric figure of the uni- 
verse. Here is a geranium. Its substance is the gases of which it is 
composed, and which is, therefore, invisible ; its form is that which 
we see; its influence is its fragrance, delighting the sense, or its 
beauty, addressing the aesthetic element in man, or its uses, appealing 
to the needs of man. Instead of a dogmatic or theologic conception 
of three persons in one, compelling men to exclaim as did the great 
Webster, " I do not understand the arithmetic of heaven," reveal it 
in its geometric character, and its truth will be conceded. 

To other doctrines the same observation will apply, and the same 
mathematical principle will aid in determining their validity. God is 
infinite, omnipresent, without body or parts; but, mysterious as is 
this statement as a theologic utterance, it evolves into a clearly ex- 
pressed reality under the pilotage of the geometric ideal. Time and 
space are bodiless conditions, omnipresent, and really infinite to the 
human mind ; they are the geometrical figures of a bodiless and in- 
finite omnipresence. Equally representative of the divine being in 
his bodiless condition is oxygen, a substance without parts, and as 
universal as air and matter. As to the unity of God, scientists are 
engaged in rehearsing the great fact that the universe is a unit, and 
matter is reducible to a single atom, forgetting that the unity of the 
universe is the mathematical figure of the unity of God. On , such 



THE COUNTERPART OF NATURE. 633 

geometric pedestals the existence, character, and attributes of God may- 
stand, natural truth being the figure of spiritual truth. 

In like manner the Incarnation, an apparition in religion, may be 
reduced to a simple geometric ideal, having its illustration in the in- 
carnation of gases in solids, such as trees, rocks, flowers, mountains, 
and seas. The visible is the incarnation of the invisible. 

Atonement, or antidote for sin, has its counterpart in the antidotes 
of nature for poison, disease, accident, and pain ; and resurrection is 
typed by the day succeeding the night. 

In the facts, forms, .laws, and principles of nature are the adum- 
brations of spiritual truth, or, to express the thought less metaphys- 
ically, Christianity is the counterpart of nature. The laws of one are 
the laws of the other ; he who understands one must understand the 
other, for the one is the figure of the other. Christianity is natural 
religion, or the religion of nature in its geometric ideal. The secret 
thinker now holds that religious truth can be demonstrated by mathe- 
matics, or that the evidence of such truth is as mathematical, as pos- 
itive, as certain as the evidence of scientific truth. Cousin speaks of 
thought as having a geometric form, implying that the root of psy- 
chology is geometry. Poetry is a mathematical product. Intellectu- 
ality is geometry in motion. Dante's "Inferno" is a species of mathe- 
matics. Relying upon the geometric character of Christianity as 
explained, the conclusion is justified that the dynamic force of nature 
is the dynamic force of religion, or that the life of the higher is also 
the life of the lower. Its dynamical character, however, is not fully- 
manifested in its analogy to natural force. In fact, its highest force 
is of a higher kind. 

V. A truer conception of the real character of Christianity as a 
religious force arises from a study of the benevolent spirit which seems 
hidden in all its truths. Christianity is the incarnation of benevo- 
lence in its teachings, in its projects, and in the methods by which it 
communicates itself to the world. Its great principle is love, the 
power of which can not be estimated. Taken in its lowest form, as 
charity, it represents the relieving and helping power of religion, 
which has stimulated the establishment of asylums, hospitals, and 
alms-houses, and led to prison reform, the abolition of slavery, and 
the mitigation of the evils of poverty. Not that charity had no ex- 
istence in the world until the Master taught it, but it found an ad- 
vanced expression in his teachings, and an exhibition of it in his life 
and self-sacrifice that has ever since made the word beautiful, and the 
thing itself sacred. In the same spirit it offers liberty to mankind ; 
freedom from oppression, liberty to worship God; freedom from 
slavery. It is emancipation as well as love ; it is the religion of char- 



634 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ity and the religion of liberty. These two are words of power. Love 
and liberty are stronger than a pair of steam-engines. Preach these, and 
religion triumphs. These the needy, suffering world can appreciate, 
while the metaphysical content of religious truth is overlooked, and 
its power unfelt. Mathematical it is — this is the guaranty of its or- 
derly working, and the pledge of its perpetuity ; benevolent it is — this 
will arrest attention, and draw the needy world to its embrace. 

VI. In a most emphatic sense Christianity is a biological religion, or 
the religion of life. It is the only life-imparting religion ; its highest 
force is biological. In the preceding pages of this volume Christian- 
ity has been discussed as a system of truth, and its power has been 
represented as the power of truth. We are now compelled to draw 
a distinction between truth and life, or allow that life is one of the 
contents of truth, or truth is one of the contents of life. Is there 
any difference between truth and life? The dynamical character of 
truth must be conceded ; it has power, the power of knowledge ; but 
is there not something in religion besides its truth? Truth may be 
the instrument of life, but is it life? Is truth a biological force, or 
is the biological force of Christianity something else ? Truth-power 
and spirit-power, however related in the accomplishment of redemp- 
tion, are different ; both belong to Christianity, but the latter is the 
sovereign and final power. By spirit-power we mean the power of 
the divine Spirit working in the human heart for its salvation, as 
truth alone can not work. Truth enlightens ; the Spirit kindles the 
soul into a living fire. Truth points out the way to life ; the Spirit im- 
parts life. The Spirit-force of Christianity is the life-force of religion, 
and this is its greatest power. 

We must also distinguish the truth respecting power from power 
itself. The atoning force of Christianity is one with its spirit-force, 
for without atonement salvation is impossible. But the truth of 
atonement is not the power of atonement, or the fact is not its power. 
Atonement-truth is not atonement-power ; back of the truth is the 
power which is spiritual, or the power of God in Jesus Christ, mani- 
fested by the Spirit. The supreme dynamical elements of Christianity 
are not, therefore, its revealed truths, but its spiritual forces in Atone- 
ment and Spirit-presence, for in these alone are its life-giving ten- 
dencies and its life-imparting agencies. It is a biological religion, 
not because of its truth, but because of the spirit of God operating 
through and by the truth upon the hearts of the children of men. 

VII. Christianity is the religion of realities, having power in propor- 
tion as it is inherently real. Philosophy may be reduced to a catena 
of abstractions on subjects the illumination of which may be found in 
religion. Physical science is compelled to deal with abstractions, and 



THE RANGE OF THE DIVINE PLAN 635 

to deal with them as if they were true. In geography the equator is 
treated as a definite something, whereas it is denned as an imaginary 
line ; so it is. The lines of longitude and latitude are imaginary, but 
geography treats them as if they have an absolute existence. Geometry 
begins with a point, an indefinable nothing that has the appearance of 
being something. Higher mathematics even presumes to make use 
of the following most extraordinary imaginary fact : The mercury in a 
thermometer, it is agreed, must be above zero, below it, or at zero ; 
but it may be necessary to suppose it is somewhere else than at any 
of these points. Impossible that it be anywhere else, yet science 
works with the mercury at an impossible place, and treats the imag- 
inary fact as if it were a reality. Nothing like this or equal to it ob- 
tains in Christianity. It is without abstractions, imaginary facts, im- 
possibilities. It works from realities, many of them supernatural, but 
realities full of power. Abstractions may be useful; realities are 
powerful. Theism, incarnation, inspiration, regeneration, and resur- 
rection are not abstractions ; they are realities ; hence they are powers. 

VIII. Christianity is a plan. To say that it is a " plan of salvation " 
would be speaking theologically; it is such a plan, but it is more. 
It is not the plan of history, as known to us; it is not the plan of 
the Church, as manifested in its purpose ; it is the plan of God for 
the universe of matter and men, for earth and heaven, for time and 
eternity. It is broad, deep, high, divine, eternal. It comprehends 
all things ; it includes all history ; it touches the springs of causation, 
and turns the wheel of universal destiny ; it organizes the enterprises 
of grace, and makes a kingdom for the reign of truth ; it originated 
with God, and is adapted to man ; it is the power of God, and, 
therefore, the power of the universe. 

If this conception of Christianity be correct, its power is no longer 
a mystery. If it is substance ; if it is evolutional ; if it is geometric ; 
if it is reality ; if it is the only plan of God for this world and all 
world's, — its future is as God's. 



636 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE MAGNETISM OR CHRISTIANITY. 

CERTAIN citizens of Thessalonica, in describing the effect of 
apostolic preaching, said unto the rulers that it had "turned the 
world upside down," than which a more accurate concession to the 
radical power of Christianity never was rendered. No more potent 
influence has the world felt than that which the Galilean teacher has 
exerted. Wherever his Gospel has been declared, the effect, 
whether instantaneous or gradual, has gone out into all conditions, 
and has been as permanent as it has been impressive. In heathen or 
civilized lands, the results of Christian truth have been the same — 
governments have been reconstructed, religions dethroned, evils dis- 
turbed, checked, and rooted out, and a new order of civil and social 
life has been introduced and fostered. In conflict with pagan relig- 
ions, tumults, uproars, and excitements have sometimes occurred, and 
prejudiced historians have not been slow to attribute to it a seditious 
tendency, provoking revolutions, strifes, political commotions,- and 
unnecessary frictions and antagonisms in the social machinery of the 
world. Without controversy, it has the peculiar faculty of develop- 
ing a strange enthusiasm for salvation ; it has a genius for effecting 
large reforms, a spirit that promotes the philanthropies, a propelling 
power that aids the moralities ; it does inflame the public mind against 
caste, slavery, intemperance, polygamy, idolatry, mammon, murder, 
Sabbath-breaking, theft, inhumanity, infidelity, and atheism ; and wher- 
ever it lifts its voice it agitates, disturbs, and awakens the evil-doers, 
and unites in organized effort the energies of the virtuous and the 
good against the influence of the wicked and the reign of the ungodly. 

What is the agitative force of Christianity ? What is its magnet- 
ism ? Is it a visible, tangible somewhat, or the occult influence of 
the supernatural and invisible? Is its power the result of mechan- 
ism ? or is Christianity a vital force, pushing itself to the surface, and 
overturning as it goes the lawless organisms and impure agencies and 
institutions of the world? 

Replying in a general way, it is clear that the exciting power of 
Christianity is not in the methods employed for its propagation, or in 
the use of any carnal or secular force whatever. In this it differs from 
all religions that preceded it, and from those that still exist and op- 
pose its progress. Scanning the history of Mohammedanism, the 



THE GLORY OF CHRISTIANITY. 637 

student is pained on account of the methods which it adopted for its 
extension, and the excess of violence to which it resorted. The re- 
ligion of the prophet was, and is, the religion of the sword. Whole 
countries have been thrown into consternation by the presence of 
priests, who were the advance guards of a bloodthirsty and fanatical 
army, bent quite as much on religious persecution as on political 
power and territorial aggrandizement. Empires have been devastated 
by the soldiers of that faith, which advanced, never by the voluntary 
recognition of its inherent adaptations on the part of peoples, but by 
military processes, and thrived only in soil nourished by blood. A 
religion of terror, it excited the fears by suppressing the hopes of 
millions whom it forced into obedience and punished into loyalty. 

The record, of Christianity is not a record of blood. We do not 
disguise the fact that, at important epochs in its history it has worn a 
military complexion and essayed its tasks through the aid of force, 
as under the brilliant administration of Constantine, and later under 
the gigantic imposition of the Papacy ; but the dashing Christianity 
of the fourth century lost its spirituality by contact with the secular 
power, and the cruel Christianity of Hildebrand and his successors is 
paying the penalty of its apostasy by a slow and marked decay. 

Outside of the barbarism of method, and independent of the 
ecclesiastical structures reared for its safety, Christianity, in a spirit 
of peace, has agitated, shaken, and surprised the world out of its 
stupor more than all things else, the surprise being all the greater as 
its methods have been unwarlike and apparently inadequate. It is 
not new to compare Christianity with light, working silently in ex- 
pelling darkness, or with leaven, permeating civilization by a slow 
and graduated process, or with salt, preserving the world from moral 
decay. It is the glory of Christianity that it is light, it is leaven, it 
is salt, but it is more. It is fire, it is a hammer, it is wind, it is res- 
urrection. It is not the hiding of power merely, like electricity in 
the cloud, or like an army sleeping ; but it is power at work, like 
electricity shooting athwart the sky, setting fire to the stars, and 
shaking planets in their orbits; it is like Napoleon's army at the 
Pyramids, or like Barak's in Esdraelon, accomplishing its task under 
the inspiration of the past and the future. It is the religion of active 
force, guided by the spirit that originated it, and for the conservation 
of spiritual ends. Gibbon, who was somewhat elaborate in his anal- 
ysis of the causes of the progress of Christianity, discerned not the 
motive power of the religion itself. He saw in the zeal of the early 
Christians, the simple ecclesiastical plans of the Church, and the 
miraculous claims of the apostles and fathers, a source of enthusiasm, 
communicating itself to multitudes, and resulting in the multiplication 



638 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

of Christian societies; but he failed to explain the origin of the 
Church, and why there are Christians at all. While Gibbon's resume 
is a partial explanation of the spread of Christianity, it does not re- 
veal the spirit, the essence-power, of Christianity ; it does not exhibit 
the agitating, overturning, progressive, and magnetic elements of the 
new religion. To these let us now devote attention. 

In its doctrinal character lies its secret propelling force. A doctrine 
is a principle or truth fundamental to the system to which it is ac- 
credited. A religion of doctrines is a religion of primary principles, 
indicating its character, temper, tone, strength, and possibility of suc- 
cess. A continent made up of rivers, prairies, and plains would be 
inhabitable ; but it would be wanting in the solidity, variety, and 
grandeur that mountain chains would give it. A religion of specu- 
lations, or commonplace truths, might be accepted in the absence of 
any thing better ; but it would be inferior to a religion of revealed 
truths. Dogmatic Christianity, or the religion of doctrinal truth, is 
a primary necessity. A religion without revealed truths would be 
like astronomy without stars, botany without plants, and geology 
without rocks. Christianity is a revelation of truth ; it is a mount- 
ain chain of doctrine; it has its Alleghenies, Rocky, and Sierra 
Nevada ranges in the great doctrinal teachings that are so prominent 
in it ; they hold it together, weave it into form, combine to give it 
sublimity, and are the sources of its power. From their altitudes a 
vision of God, man, life, being, and eternity may be taken, and in 
the atmosphere that sweeps around the summits the soul learns to be 
still, and takes its first lessons of life. In a very pronounced way, 
Paul exhibited religion in its doctrinal form in Thessalonica and Asia 
Minor, and idols fell from their pedestals, and the niches of temples 
soon emptied their statues in the dust. Exhibited doctrinally any- 
where, it strikes at evil, whether moral, social, political, or commer- 
cial, arresting attention, provoking inquiry, and leading to changes in 
the manner of the public and the individual life. 

What specific doctrinal truths have an arresting and agitating 
power? In his summation of " causes" Gibbon announces the escha- 
tological elements of Christianity as supreme, asserting that the doc- 
trines of the immortality of the soul, of the millennium, and of the 
end of the world, were potent factors in arousing the fears and se- 
curing the faith of the multitudes, to whom they were presented. It 
is undoubtedly true that Christian eschatology, unfolded in its breadth 
of meaning, will awaken inquiry, reverence, reformation, and wor- 
ship ; and. if the apostles and Christian fathers urged with vehement 
interest the consideration of the great truths of resurrection, immor- 
tality, and judgment, it was because pagan religions had only 



THE FORGE OF GOSPEL MOTIVES. 639 

obscurely and indefinitely, if at all, reminded their subjects of them, 
and because a knowledge of such truths was imperative, and to be 
acquired only by revelation. With faith in immortality the Greek 
sages loaded it with a mythology quite as dreary and repulsive as 
superstition had ever invested it ; and the old religions were too sens- 
ual or material in their horoscope of the future life to satisfy reason 
or justify faith. No distinct answer to the problem of life after 
death had been given by philosophy or religion, except as it was in- 
volved in mythology or superstition. Into that night of intellectual 
darkness Christianity shone like a new sun, clearing up the mid- 
night scenes of paganism, and extinguishing even the twilight of 
Judaism in the broader and fuller revelation of the Gospel of the 
Son of God. 

The doctrines of the pre-existence of souls, of transmigration, of 
incarnations, of Tartarus, of the river Styx, and of the abode of the 
gods surrendered to the clearer teachings of immortality, resurrection, 
hades, final judgment, and ultimate heaven and hell, as they fell 
from Christ and those who went forth as heralds of the truth. Sheol 
was supplanted by hades, hades was divided into gehenna and Para- 
dise, and beyond both were seen the open gates to final destiny. The 
"last things" of religion in the hands of the apostles stood out as 
the bas-relief teachings of religion, which had immediate recognition, 
and which impressed men with fear if sinful, and with hope if godly. 
Christianity was a clearing-up religion in the field of eschatology; it 
reaped the truth and plucked up error by the roots. 

That it excited all classes to inquiry, and satisfied both the reason and 
the faith, is not surprising ; that it does not excite a deeper demonstra- 
tion of interest now than then is surprising. In the passage of the 
centuries Christianity has not abandoned its eschatological truths, but 
rather insists upon them as truths underlying a correct religious faith, 
and as all-important motives to a religious life. If it threw the shad- 
ows of the last day, the gloom and terror of the grave, and the cer- 
tainties of judgment, over the souls of men in early times, it does so 
now ; if Felix and the Philippian jailer trembled in the presence of 
Paul as he reasoned of eternal things, so now rulers quake in view 
of judgment ; if Paul's sermon at Athens, Peter's on Pentecost, and 
Christ's parables relating to the judgment-day and its final decrees, 
impressed multitudes in their day, the same truths have the same 
power to-day. Such truths compel men to pause in their career of 
ungodliness, insincerity, and degradation ; such truths are the mag- 
nets of Christianity, influencing men to reflection, repentance, and a 
new life ; such truths will turn the world upside down. 

Christianity did not depend alone upon the spell of the future for 



640 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

its power. It had other resources, it had another mission, and so 
intent on present achievement was it that the thought of the future 
was often lost in immediate undertakings and revelations. Neither 
philosophy nor the pagan religions had sufficiently represented the 
infirmities, weaknesses, and moral disabilities of the race, nor, ac- 
knowledging the power of evil, were they able to invent a satisfac- 
tory explanation of its origin, or acquaint mankind by what means it 
might be overcome. In its own way Christianity undertook to throw 
light upon the dark subject, explaining the introduction of evil into 
our world, its transmission under laws of heredity from generation 
to generation, its fatal influence on the body and the soul, and the 
impossibility of its extinction by human or natural agency. At the 
same time, revealing iniquity in all its hideousness, it proposed an 
adequate method for its suspension and final extinction. 

The appalling fact of evil, as a universal burden, has never been 
denied either by philosophy or paganism ; but its appalling nature 
has never been declared by either, and a gracious remedy never fore- 
shadowed until the dawn of Christianity. The root of evil is in mat- 
ter, thought the philosopher. Natural evil was the subject of dis- 
cussion and the object of assault. Christianity, however, declares 
itself the antagonist of moral evil, which has its root in voluntary 
disobedience of right. Remove moral evil, and natural evil will cease 
to disturb or annoy. Philosophy bombarded natural conditions; Chris- 
tianity assails moral conditions. Philosophy condemns God's physical 
government; Christianity condemns man's moral life. 

A modern type of transcendentalism apologizes for sin in affirm- 
ing that it is not criminal ; it affirms that it is a misfortune, a blun- 
der, a mistake; it is this, and it is more. Transcendentalism, or 
Unitarianism, needs enlightenment quite as much as philosophy or 
paganism. Out of the shadow of darkness Christianity conducts 
the inquirer into a region of knowledge, in which the nature of sin 
is exposed, its ruinous tendencies exhibited, its dreadful penalties, 
both natural and judicial, announced, and the antidote for the poison 
prescribed. Teach the doctrine of human sinfulness, as it is portrayed 
in the Testaments ; represent human helplessness as it appears on the 
pages of the Gospel ; declare the doom of the obdurate and unfor- 
given, as the same Gospel warrants ; and then preach the hope of 
deliverance through Jesus Christ, as he has authorized in his 
own words, and a city like Athens, a ruler like Agrippa, an officer 
like the centurion, a bigot like Sosthenes, and a worldling like 
Dionysius, will weep, repent, and rejoice, or, alarmed and impenitent, 
will become enraged, and sink all the deeper in sensuality and despair. 
Either truth of the Gospel — human infirmity or divine rescue, or 



MAGNETIC POWER OF THEISTIC TRUTH. 641 

both — will excite the emotions of the multitude, and arouse from sleep 
the nations that hear the Gospel. 

These double-edge truths are the magnets of Christianity. This 
is the practical side of the Gospel, and it is as effectual in awakening 
the world as the eschatological previously noted. What the Gospel 
can do for men here interests them quite as much as what it proposes 
to do with them hereafter. The present helpfulness of Christianity is 
as attractive as the promise of future deliverance from eternal con- 
demnation. Present deliverance is the condition of future deliver- 
ance. Insisting upon its present adaptations, men are drawn to it. 

The theistic element of Christianity constitutes a prominent 
doctrinal characteristic, and in apostolic times it was especially con- 
tagious of disorder, excitement, and revolution. In its teachings re- 
specting God, perhaps, it antagonized the old religions more violently 
than by its eschatology or atonement, for monotheism and polytheism can 
not co-exist in the same religion, or enter into the same civilization 
and social conditions. Polytheism, though in a state of decline, had 
yet its advocates and altars in the days of Paul ; and where it 
did not obtain there idolatry of another type was in vogue. The 
condition of the introduction of Christianity, as emphasized by the 
Christian leaders, was the subsidence of polytheism and idolatry. Be- 
tween the two religions there could be no fraternity, not even the 
look of recognition. God, not gods; Jehovah, not Jupiter, was the 
cry of the apostles wherever they went. Diana of the Ephesians 
must retire ; Neptune and Minerva must be dethroned ; and Pluto 
must surrender the keys to the lower world. In its theism Christianity 
was not a compromise with polytheism, but rather a challenge, like 
that of Elijah on Carmel, to all religions to prove themselves or sink 
into nothingness. This attitude of the teachers of Christianity pro- 
voked the opposition of all classes; business men, polytheists, rulers, 
priests, the whole city and the whole country, arose in , indignation 
against the enemies of their religion and their faith. The theistic 
idea is magnetic, and in proportion as it settles down upon the heart 
of humanity, it draws it upward toward God. The existence of God 
is a fundamental truth, necessary not more to religion than philosophy. 
When proclaimed it requires from men more than honest reverence ; 
it imposes the obligation of immediate repentance, correct habits, pure 
feelings, holy worship ; it arouses the thought of dependence and re- 
sponsibility, and has a restraining effect on the disposition to wicked- 
ness and profligacy. In the presence of the great truth, false religions 
withered away; the violent were restrained; and nations were dis- 
turbed. Christian theism promotes the reign of conscience in morals, 
and the reign of God in the soul. 

41 



642 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

The Biblical representation of a personal God contains the cor- 
related idea of divine providence, or the rule of God in the affairs 
of men. On this point the world has always needed instruction, and 
needs it now quite as much as at any time in the past, for the ma- 
terialist is undertaking to banish the divine administration from the 
universe. Ancient philosophy removed God from any friendly in- 
terest in human affairs; modern philosophy predicates a universe so 
constructed as to manage itself, not only doing away with the mirac- 
ulous, but precluding the intervention of God by the ordinary ave- 
nues of fixed law ; in other words, the universe is independent of 
God. Such a view is cold and comfortless, and contrary to the 
teaching of Him who knoweth our frame, and numbereth our steps. 
The fatherhood of God, the protection of human life and the supply 
of its wants, the guidance of human steps and the ordering of human 
ways, the unseen leading of individuals into positions of usefulness, 
and the conservation of individual happiness, are among the benefi- 
cent results that follow the providential administration of God. 

The doctrine of divine providence, special and general, as taught 
in the Scriptures and illustrated in the lives of the eminent saints 
and heroes of the Church, is magnetic in its power over the hearts 
of the children of men, and insures Christianity a welcome when it 
is understood. 

The core of Christianity is the three-fold doctrine of monotheism, in- 
volving providential relations to man, of atonement, involving human sin- 
fulness and divine rescue, and of the future life, involving an eternal 
heaven and an eternal hell. On this three-fold basis Christianity in its 
doctrinal character rests, challenging the world to overthrow it, and 
agitating and attracting mankind as they comprehend its signifi- 
cance, and discern that the highest self-interest requires personal ac- 
ceptance of it. Doctrinally, it does not appeal merely to the fears of 
men; it enlightens the judgment and extinguishes errors, preparing the 
mind for a rational study of truth; it dethrones idols and enthrones a 
personal Creator, giving one an inside view of the divine government, 
and pointing out the necessity of harmony with the divine will; it reveals 
human helplessness to an alarming degree, creating a desire for rescue, 
and then provides an available remedy for sin, urging all to appropriate 
it as soon as presented; and, to enforce the duty of volitional surrender to 
Ood, and the necessity of a new life, it points out the fearful guilt of 
delay and the awful consequences of rejection, at the same time enticing 
the sold into immediate obedience by the promise of rewards, as fasci- 
nating as they are wonderfid, and as divine as they are imperishable. 
The three-fold doctrine of Christianity is the great magnet of the new 
religion. 



INFLUENCE OF THE PERSONAL CHRIST. 643 

Even more powerful than doctrine is the personic element in the 
foundation of Christianity, or the character, offices, and influence of 
the Master himself. Truth sometimes seems cold and distant, but 
personality is a center of interest, inquiry, and enthusiasm. Chris- 
tianity is more than a system of truths, it is the divine personality 
crystallized in humanity, chiefly in Jesus Christ. Mankind are 
prone to judge of systems of religion by their authors or founders, 
inquiring into their parentage, education, physical appearance and 
habits, social connections, worldly advantages, and secular positions, 
and especially are they anxious to know the origin of the religious 
idea which dominates in their lives, and to which they are striving 
to give outward reality. This is natural, and every religion should 
satisfy the demand for historical explanation. Christianity came forth, 
not with a fabled character as its founder, or with a hermit as its 
introducer, but as the outgrowth of one who dwelt among men, but 
surpassed them in the perfection of his human qualities, and in the 
possession of powers not less than superhuman and supernatural. 
The story of his birth is weird-like and of rare celebrity ; the obscur- 
ity of his life in Nazareth, and its relation to his after-work, have 
not been fully explained by historian or theologian ; the brief public 
career that followed, filled with deeds that still live in the memory of 
the world, and illuminated with teachings that constitute the life- 
blood of the best civilizations, is calculated to excite the thoughtful 
and arouse even the stupid ; while the melancholy fate that overtook 
him, and the sufferings with which he sealed his mission, still touch 
the heart and force the flow of tears. 

The results of his presence in the world are as potent as the facts 
of his history. Living, he was the attractive source of the religion- 
ists of his age, shaking the foundations of old faiths to the ground, 
and subverting false social orders and customs, as easily as light ex- 
pels darkness ; preached, he became the disorganizing element in all 
communities, robbing paganism of its charms, and disarming all re- 
ligions of their power of propagation ; crucified and RISEN, he has 
become the corner-stone of civilization and the inspiration of the world's 
progress toward an ideal condition of morality, industry, and happi- 
ness. Christ is in every thing, the omnipresent factor of history, the 
omnipotent force of the ages, the guiding spirit of the race. Litera- 
ture teems with thought concerning Christ, either to acknowledge his 
authority and enlarge his influence, or to criticise his claims and 
deny his place in religion ; without him, modern art would be barren 
and uninteresting ; without his teachings, civilization would degener- 
ate into barbarism ; without Christ, society would decay. No other 
religion has such a Founder; no other a comparable personic force 



644 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

behind it or in it. Supreme moral excellence, immaculate purity, 
unquestioned veracity, transparent humility, universal benevolence, 
sympathetic helpfulness, boundless faith, illimitable knowledge, and 
infinite affection, are the personal adornments of Jesus Christ. 

The sinlessness of the Son of Man is a proof that he was more' 
than man; or, as Horace Bushnell phrases it, "the character of 
Jesus forbids his possible classification with men." Whether he main- 
tained his sinlessness by miraculous means, or by inherent love of 
righteousness ; whether the theory of his perfection is a theory only, 
without justification in the presence of his full history, or to be main- 
tained until positive proof to the contrary is furnished, are questions 
that thinking men sometimes discuss. Mr. Hennel, in asserting that 
Jesus is an "imperfectly known character," insinuates that if all the 
facts of his life were known it might be found morally defective 
where we least suspect it; but Paul says he "knew no sin." Some- 
times it is declared that, even if his external life was blameless, we 
have no means of knowing what his internal life was, and that it may 
have been imperfect. This is only a supposition, without force or 
value beside the testimony of those who were eye-witnesses of his 
majesty, and the companions of his life. The supreme fact of his 
sinlessness gives him supreme power as a teacher and exemplar of 
his religion. 

The Messianic character of Jesus Christ is also a magnetic element 
in his history. As the Son of Man he was perfect ; as the Son of 
God, he was the Messiah, establishing the kingdom of God, or the 
eternal rule of religion in men. In the one aspect he is an ex- 
ample, in the other an authority ; in the one a teacher, in the other 
a king. A new moral government, with new laws, new aims, new 
plans, and new results, is contemplated by the presence of the Mes- 
siah. This means the overthrow of old moral governments, or their 
transformation into the new; it means a radical change in the moral 
life of the world, and a conformity to the new standard of conduct as 
set forth by the exemplar himself; it means regeneration, sanctifica- 
tion, and eternal glory. In himself different from all men, his mis- 
sion was no less different from that of all teachers of religion. He is 
the promised Messiah, and, therefore, the hope of man. Without 
him, as perfect man, Christianity can not be; without his mission or 
Messiahship, Christianity can not redeem or triumph. The root of 
Christianity is, not theism or eschatology, but Christ. From the 
region of theistic thinking have issued polytheism and mythology ; 
from eschatology have come the brood of pagan futures that have 
paralyzed the races; from Christ comes Christianity, with its light 
and power. Singularly enough, Gibbon does not discover the rela- 



MISSJONARY CHARACTER OF THE CHURCH. 645 

tion of Christ to the great system of religion, or that he is its inspir- 
ing character, or the vital influence which the world everywhere is 
feeling. To overlook Christ is to overlook the essentials of Chris- 
tianity. He is the magnet of magnets, the only source of power. 

The great purpose of his religion is conquest, not conquest in the 
political or military sense, but in the sense of universal supremacy as 
a religion ; and this purpose, not common to religions, it seeks to 
promote through efficient organized agencies. To trust to the inher- 
ent leavening power of truth, without co-operating instrumentalities 
for the spread of truth, is folly indeed, for the ungodly world does 
not mean that truth shall prevail. To overcome its opposition, truth 
must organize its forces, and array them in human instrumentalities. 
The human mind takes not kindly to abstractions. Abstract thought 
is powerless over the multitudes. An abstract philosophy will not 
extend beyond the circle of the philosophers. An abstract religion is 
equally powerless; it must concrete itself in visible forms, and em- 
ploy visible agencies for its work. An abstract ship is one that exists 
in the mind of the builder — a concrete ship is one that rides the seas. 
The Christian religion is both abstract and concrete ; abstract in its 
great doctrinal structure, concrete in its supernatural Founder, in its 
institutions and instrumentalities. 

The Christian Church is the exponent of the Christian religion, 
organized not merely to gather in one those who receive a common 
faith, but more particularly for the vindication of the oracles of God, 
and the extension of Christianity by systematic and organized means. 
It was intended to be more than a brotherhood, or close corporation 
of similarly affected souls ; it was established as an aggressive force, 
for the purpose of invading the haunts of sin, and crushing out by 
methods singular and effective all the Protean forms of error, and en- 
riching the world with its possessions of truth, wisdom, and salvation. 
With this end before it, the Church could not be in any community 
a merely latent influence, or a quiet and accommodating organiza- 
tion ; it must be a correcting, reforming, stimulating, consuming in- 
fluence, putting itself at the head of all social changes, demanding 
just legislation on all vital subjects, and resisting by positive efforts the 
encroachments of vice, until it is stripped of its power to do harm. 
Such is the mission of the Church, but in executing it, it necessarily 
comes into antagonism with all that is opposed to Christianity, and 
creates consternation, hatred, hostility, and persecution. 

In its missionary character the Church is an exciting instrumen- 
tality, a disturber of old foundations of misbelief, of the false se- 
curity of the world, and bears the odium that attaches to Christianity 
itself. The Church is not Christianity, but the two are inseparable 



646 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

in their fortunes, and the latter succeeds, if at all, only through the 
aggressions of the former. Gibbon recognized the Church as the 
propagating instrumentality of Christianity, and perceived that through 
its councils and the devotion of its members it was a compact force 
hard to resist, and its success could not be stayed. The Church is 
not a secret organization, nor dependent on secret methods for the ac- 
complishment of her task ; the doors of her temples are wide open, 
and, entering, we may inspect her altars, listen to her teachings, catch 
the melody of her songs, and see her in her beauty and glory. Her 
agencies are as simple as her institutions, and her customs as vener- 
able as they are attractive. See how sacredly she keeps the Sabbath, 
and how she enforces the hebdomadal rest on natural as well as spir- 
itual grounds ! Witness the tender observance of the Eucharistic 
feast, and how carefully she guards the memory of Christ by the 
monumental sacrament; follow the living ministry as they go forth 
into all lands, declaring the same Gospel to all peoples, and thrilling 
an unsaved world with the tidings of redemption ; listen to the ten 
thousand songs in the home and the sanctuary, bearing religious truth 
to human hearts, and proclaiming the graciousness of Him who sits 
on the throne ; observe the Sunday-schools gathering in the unnumbered 
children of earth, and teaching them the lofty ideal of life in Jesus 
Christ; listen to the pious prayer of Christendom from prayer-meet- 
ing and family altar for baptism of strength and victory in conflict 
with evil ; examine the benevolent movements of the Christian Church, 
having in view the publication of the Gospel among the nations, and 
the redemption of all peoples ; and the conclusion must be that the 
Church is the best organized agency for the spread of Christianity 
that can be devised. Its purpose known, wherever it commences its 
work, evil arrays itself against it ; the result is public commotion, and 
the display of the magnetizing power of Christianity. The Church 
is the magnetic instrument of the new, religion. 

The internal claim of Christianity, or its assumption of a divine origin } 
is pregnant ivith enthusiastic influence. Almost all religions trace 
themselves to God, or, at all events, to superhuman authorization. 
None, we believe, claims a purely human origin, for that would at 
once invalidate its right to authority. To satisfy the higher wants of 
man, ever expressing themselves in religious acts, there must be in 
religion something that man can not himself originate or suggest. All 
religions, the spurious as well as the genuine, recognize the funda- 
mental necessity of a superhuman element, growing out of human 
conditions. Hence Greece and Rome ascribed a divine source to their 
religions. Paganism, receiving religious instruction from priests, sup- 
posed them to be related to supernatural beings, or to be superhuman 



THE UNITY OF BIBLICAL REVELATIONS. 647 

beings themselves. The Christian religion, overleaping all interme- 
diary agencies, ascends higher than any other, centering itself in the 
authenticated will of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. Its initial 
claim is not that it is god-like, but that it is from God. 

From the initial claim grow others as imperious in nature, and 
really accessory to its vindication. If divine, it follows that it must 
be the only religion for man, and can in no sense fraternize with lower 
religions, or allow them the least room in this world. It pushes out 
in every direction with the avowed purpose to crush out of existence 
all other religions ; it means ' ' disintegration and absorption " of all 
others. Intolerant in its aims, the claim has providential proportions ; 
the purpose is really majestic, and grows sublime as it becomes des- 
potic ; but its execution is attended with serious difficulties and many 
apparent uncertainties. As it rises to view, crushing out other faiths, 
or absorbing them, as the sun extinguishes lesser lights, and marches 
on, conforming this world to the moral idea of God, it awakens the 
enthusiasm of the race, and nations join the upward movement with 
the glee of conquerors. Such a religion can not be narrow ; its pur- 
pose relieves it of a single restricted view ; it is ocean-broad, sky- 
deep, infinite as God. A religion with such a claim, enforced con- 
tinually by providential interpositions, and heralded by inspiring 
agencies* is calculated to arrest attention, and draw the thought of 
men to itself. 

Authoritative and uncompromising as Christianity is, it displays 
credentials of origin, character, and purpose that sometimes mock 
human wisdom, and certainly compel careful investigation and cool 
judgment in determining their integral value. The origin,, growth, 
structure, and unity of the documentary records of Christianity, or 
the harmony of Biblical truth, constitute a marvelous fact in the his- 
tory of the development of religious truth. It is noteworthy that a 
book written by more than forty authors, at periods remote by cen- 
turies from one another, and under circumstances opposed to consec- 
utive and harmonious work, should yet be pervaded by one spirit, 
and combine in the presentation of one truth. The sixty-six books of 
the Bible are one — one in the idea of right, one in the idea of religion, one 
in atonement, or metJwd of redemption, one in resurrection, one in the 
standard of eternal judgment. Such a unity of ideas, coupled with a 
oneness of purpose, is most astounding, compelling recognition from 
the devout and explanation from the unbelieving. The Christian re- 
ligion has but one book ; the Christian religion is the revelation of a 
single idea, with manifold branches, and a many-sided development. 

Gazing at the one truth, its manifoldness is at once apparent. 
Monotheism, the single element of the earliest patriarchal theology, 

/ 



648 PHILOSOPHY AND CHH1&T1AX1TY. 

rings on the ear like a note from Paradise ; the Hebrew cosmogony, 
or a revelation of the scientific order of world-building, stands out as 
a stately, divine panorama of facts ; the origin of man and the intro- 
duction of evil, as narrated by Moses, constitute two chapters found 
nowhere outside of Revelation ; the record of the deluge and of the 
multiplication of tongues must be added to the pages of revealed Bib- 
lical science; Sinaitic thunder is still heard by mankind, and the 
mountain summit rules in the justice of all civilizations ; the pious 
odes of David continue to reverberate their mysterious echoes of ex- 
perience into human hearts ; the Son ot God still atones and still for- 
gives sin ; the Church flourishes throughout the world as it never 
did, even when apostles proclaimed Christ, and kings protected the 
sacred name from reproach ; mankind are catching the rays of John's 
apocalyptic vision, and dreaming of the dawn of a so-called millen- 
nial day ; and Christendom marches on with swift tread and jubilant 
feet to the music of the Gospel. Running parallel with the science, 
the law, the poetry of the divine religion, are the monotheism, the 
atonement, the music, and the millennium of Revelation. The two, 
the lower and the upper strata of religious truth, are one in their im- 
port, and signify the moral education, the spiritual development, aud 
the final redemption of the race. 

What are the credentials of Christianity ? Just what we have men- 
tioned : its science, its law, its monotheism, its atonement, its music, 
its millennium. These are magnets of wonderful power ; these are 
"evidences" that convince. 

Among the evidences usually quoted in support of the integrity 
of divine revelation, the strongest are supposed to be prophecy and 
miracle, the first being proof of supernatural wisdom in the -prophet, 
and the second certifying to the supernatural power of the performer. 
These two pillars of Christianity appear sufficient to support it ; but 
evidences so supernatural in themselves, and so exclusively relied on 
by theologians, have created a suspicion of their genuineness by their 
very character, and by the difficulties which attend an examination 
of them. As to prophecy, it is a demonstration of the inspiration of 
the prophet ; as to particular prophecies, it is difficult to ascertain 
when some of them were uttered, the meaning of not a few is ambig- 
uous, or susceptible of a variety of interpretations, the usual applica- 
tion of some of them to certain events is considered strained and 
unwarranted, and the prophetic spirit, the genesis of the impulse, is 
involved in the thickest mystery. These objections to the prophetic 
credential unbelievers have urged with vehemence and apparent 
plausibility. 

Miracle likewise suffers repudiation at the hands of those who 



PREJUDICES OF EMINENT MEN. 649 

reject Christianity. To deny the possibility of divine intervention in 
physical affairs is easy enough ; to relegate authenticated instances of 
such intervention to mythology is a cheap and ignorant way of dis- 
posing of them. To say with Hume that a miracle is contrary to 
experience, means nothing ; to study it, as does Huxley, from the 
stand-point of the naturalist, is as reasonable as to study regeneration 
from that stand-point. To charge that miracle is a disturbance of the 
"order of nature," an order supposed to be fixed and unchangeable, 
is a play of words, for believers in miracles make no such claim, and, 
as a matter of fact, the order of nature, as Mozley shows, is not dis- 
turbed by miraculous interposition. Nature proceeded in its accus- 
tomed order after a miracle had been performed, as though insensible 
to the interposition that had taken place. If the sun stayed a little 
its march in behalf of Joshua, it soon resumed its stately move- 
ment, the inhabitants of the earth unaware that any thing had hap- 
pened. Gibbon assails the credibility of prophecy and miracle by the 
statement that some eminent men of the early Christian centuries 
were unaffected by them, as if that demonstrated any thing more 
than their own blindness and skepticism. Some " eminent men" re- 
ject the evidences now, but the Gospel goes on in spite of such 
rejection, and will never lose its power. "Eminent men" once de- 
nounced Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, and Jen- 
ner's theory and practice of vaccination, and Galileo's idea of the 
rotation of the earth, and Copernicus's solar system ; but it only 
established how perverse is ignorance, and how ruinous is prejudice. 
However, Gibbon concedes that the miracle had much to do with the 
introduction of Christianity, as it fed the appetite for the marvelous, 
and held the ignorant masses in fear, the two conditions of the reign 
of superstition. 

Indispensable as prophecy and miracle are to Christianity, there 
are other evidences in its favor quite as forceful, certainly as complete, 
and more adapted to win modern thought, that its advocates should 
hasten to employ, and substitute, if necessary, for the antiquated 
proofs of other days. If the scientific world proposes to test the in- 
tegrity of revelation by its scientific statements and anticipations ; if 
it is insisted that the purity of revealed truth must be determined 
by the character of its ethical system or supernaturalistic morality; 
if it is urged that, as a religion, it can stand only as the character of 
Christ is relieved of all moral impeachment; if it is asserted that, as 
a religion, its monotheism and system of atonement must submit to 
the closest investigation ; and if, as a religion, it must be judged by 
its history, and by what it still proposes to accomplish, — it may joy- 
fully accept such tests, and present its science, its laws, its doctrines, 



650 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

its Founder, its history, and its projects, as the credentials of its 
divine character, and as affirmative indications of its future ascend- 
ency. Not alone by miracle and prophecy, but by the truths of Reve- 
lation in their modern aspects and relations, must the religion of Revela- 
tion be interpreted, as the condition of its progress in these times, 
.and of its victory over skepticism. 

If Christianity, in its apostolic order, phases, and works, is in- 
competent to satisfy the requirements of the reason, and fails to mag- 
netize the world, let an appeal be made to nineteenth century Chris- 
tianity, freed as it is from the miraculous, but abundant in proofs of 
the divine genius that still animates it, and of the Providence that 
still guards its hopeful and expanding life. If the old credentials no 
longer excite man's interest, if the past no longer stirs the anxious 
heart, the new proofs can not fail to arouse the sluggish spirit of the 
unbelieving, as well as to quicken the trembling faith of the followers 
of Christ. There are in Christianity besides those mentioned other 
sources of enthusiasm, other instruments of power; but it is needless 
to refer to them, as it is apparent that Christianity is practically ex- 
haustless in its influence, and without bounds in its range of power. 

Has Christianity lost its magnetism ? That depotisms, paganisms, 
mythologies, social structures, inhuman legislation, and public vices 
have felt its restraining hand and surrendered to its presence, is true 
as applied to the past ; what is its present power, and what is its hope 
of the future ? It is not uncommon in these days to hear that Chris- 
tianity is obsolete, that it has lost its power over the intellectual 
classes, and that its chief supporters are the priests, women, and 
children. He who settles into this conclusion, and will not open 
his eyes to all the facts, is like the man who, denying the ex- 
istence of Jupiter's moons, refused to look through the telescope lest 
he might observe them. The mathematical progress of Christianity 
in these times — its undermining of great evils, its purification of pub- 
lic sentiment touching public conditions, and its stimulating effect on 
all the philanthropies, to say nothing of the increasing number of its 
adherents and their high social standing — contradict the assumption 
that it has lost its hold upon the intellect and conscience of man. 
Were it merely a historic religion, without adaptation to modern con- 
ditions ; or did it array itself in any wise against the highest physical, 
intellectual, social, and religious welfare of man ; or did it result in 
superstition, fanaticism, or mental or moral stagnation, — resistance of 
it would be justifiable. It is magnetic, because it is theistic, scientific, 
ethical, and eschatological ; it is magnetic, because it is adapted to man; it 
is magnetic, because it is from God. 

As a divine religion, the decadence of its exciting power is not a 



TRUTH THE GREAT AGITATOR. 651 

possibility. Its mission is to arouse the sleeping world out of its 
dream of security ; to interrogate governments as to their legislation, 
and peoples as to their moral habits ; to question the family as to its 
unity and purity ; to test the Church by suffering and discipline ; and 
to administer rebuke to all who will not obey the Gospel of the Son 
of God. In the execution of its projects, it will clash with selfish 
interests, political prejudices, secret vices, and an independent spirit, 
resulting in disturbance and antagonism. The power of Christianity 
may be measured by the antagonism it develops, as well as by the 
graciousness it exhibits. Let the doctrines of monotheism, incarna- 
tion, atonement, regeneration, resurrection, immortality, and future 
retribution be declared, and an agnostic storm ensues ; let the duties of 
worship, faith, prayer, benevolence, and the forgiving spirit be an- 
nounced, and resistance is raised ; let the ministry hold up the Son 
of God as the Teacher, the Model, and the Judge, and infidelity croaks 
and seeks revenge ; let the virtues of patience, humility, veracity, 
temperance, and peace be taught, and war breaks out and sin riots 
in the sun ; let an assault be made on the heathen world, with no 
other purpose than to lift it up into the light, and false religions will 
contend, dictate, squirm, and die in maddened haste and rebellion; 
let Messiahship, miracle, and prophecy be vindicated, and the flood- 
gates of rationalism will open wide, and vainly essay to stem the ris- 
ing tide of truth ; let the sacredness of the Sabbath and the sanctity 
of the moral law be urged, and ranting defenders of personal liberty 
will be multiplied ; let evil be restrained and condemned, and evil- 
doers will go insane with rage over restriction. In the work it under- 
takes to-day, Christianity will meet with opposition as hateful in 
spirit, as agnostic in character, and as revengeful in purpose, as that 
that confronted it in Paul's time, or in any subsequent period of its 
history. Opposition, however, awakens its energies, stimulates its 
magnetic power, and leads to spiritual achievement. 

It is not enough that Christianity be true ; it must have the 
power of persuasion, of contagion, of generating and perpetuating 
moral enthusiasm for the sake of truth. In the exercise of this power 
it is not unlikely that fanatical outbreaks and superstitious movements 
may occur, as in the past the Crusades, papal extravagances, and sec- 
tarian institutions appeared as its fruit ; but in the future its power 
should be the internal heat of truth, confined in its expression and 
development to the accomplishment of its specific mission in the 
world. Instead of relaxing its hold upon the intellect, it must tighten 
its grasp ; instead of polishing the social virtues, it must purify them ; 
instead of coquetting with " eminent men," it must elevate them to 
its height of vision ; instead of submitting to governments, it must 



652 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

teach them their responsibility to God ; instead of withholding its 
purposes, it must publish them to the ends of the earth, shaking it 
into loyalty, reverence, and harmony with God. The Christianity 
that captured the Roman Empire has the power to dictate religion to 
all nations, as it has the purpose to save them. If the zeal of its first 
disciples carried it to the isles of the sea, and planted its banners on 
three continents, the zeal of Christ's followers to-day, with the multi- 
plied agencies of a Christian civilization in their hands, and with a 
sense of ever-widening responsibility to Gospelize the nations speedily, 
should introduce the millennial condition, and give victory to all of 
Christ's dearest hopes and divinest aims. Let Christianity become 
epidemic. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

THE PSEUDODOX IN CHRISTIANITY. 

STRAUSS characterizes the resurrection of Jesus Christ as a histor- 
ical humbug, and his ascension as a symbol, or a mere "satire." 
Renan traces the story of the resurrection to Mary Magdalene, reject- 
ing all the evidences of its credibility. Hackel repudiates the Bib- 
lical notion of a personal God as a piece of ecclesiastical fiction. 
Biichner boldly declares that " Christianity has but injured the 
spiritual and material progress of mankind," and Schopenhauer pro- 
nounces it a "pessimist religion." Of all religions, Christianity is 
the worst, because its falsehoods are the greatest, its misrepresenta- 
tions the most fascinating, and its direct influence the most baneful. 
It is pessimistic, satirical, symbolical, fictitious, irrational, and op- 
pressive. The sum of skeptical critscism is that Christianity, in its 
constituent elements, is a tissue of falsehoods, some so deftly and ob- 
scurely presented as to escape the detection even of those who are 
anxious to know the truth, while others are so transparently self-in- 
consistent and self-refutatory that one is amazed at the honorable re- 
ception accorded them. Its greatest so-called truths, as its theism, its 
incarnation, its atonement, its resurrection, its immortality, its heaven 
and hell, are its greatest deceptions. Christianity is thus set forth as 
a monstrous error, having originated in the pious imagination of 
Christ's followers, but perpetuated in after ages by the ecclesiastical 
organization known as the Church in the face of the exposure of its 
stupendous falsehood. The false in Christianity is, therefore, the sub- 
ject of our inquiry. 

It embraces not only the errors of creeds, but also the essential 



ERRORS IN RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES. 653 

weaknesses of organic or revealed Christianity. It embraces not only 
the frailties of Christian organizations, but also the imperfections of 
Christian believers, which are persistently quoted as an embarrass- 
ment to its acceptance, and as evidence of its darkening and degrad- 
ing influence in the world. Christianity is not only bad ; it is also 
false. Christianity may be viewed as orthodox, or, as it is popularly 
accepted, as a system of revealed truth ; as heterodox, or a variation from 
the orthodox ; and as pseudodox, or essentially and internally false, 
and therefore a variation from both of the preceding. 

It is not at all difficult to point out defects in human religions, or 
errors in systems of philosophy. The Assyrian religions, embodying 
certain revealed truths, or truths that seem as sacred as any in the 
Hebrew Scriptures, were yet preliminary, and inadequate to the ac- 
complishment of their purpose. Absorbing mythological notions — 
the tendency of human religions — they easily glided into fanaticism 
or superstition, and rather degraded than elevated their subjects. 
Brahminism, more stately in form, was less free from mysticism, 
mythology, and erratic suggestion. Buddhism, protesting against 
pure Brahminism, aud advancing in its teachings, was as religiously 
enervating as the religion it opposed. Mohammedanism, superior to 
both, because including in its category of doctrines certain divinely 
accepted Christian tenets, renders itself obnoxious to the Christian 
world, by its surplusage of irrational and superstitious revelations. In 
all religions of human origin the pessimistic, the irrational, the un- 
philosophical, the pseudodox abound. 

Likewise every philosophical system from Plato to Spencer par- 
takes of the general debility of human speculation, and is religiously 
both pessimistic and pseudodox. Blemishes in human religions, weak- 
nesses in human institutions, insufficiency in human philosophies, 
errors in all, we are not surprised to find ; but will a religion not 
human in origin exhibit similar weaknesses, and be equally irrational 
and unphilosophical ? Is Christianity a system of pseudo elements? 
Is it a crude, narrow, speculative religion, inadequate on account of 
limitation, insufficient from want of power? Or is it so manifestly 
perfect in its doctrinal structure, so transparently pure in its spiritual 
influence, so obviously divine in its origin, and so magically om- 
nipotent in its energies, that criticism is absurd, and questioning en- 
tirely wrong? 

For a religion so notably high-born as Christianity no exemption 
from inspection is claimed, and assertion of perfection should not be 
made unless it can be demonstrated. Investigation is in order to sat- 
isfy its friends, and a necessity to answer the objections with which 
skeptical thought has assailed it. 



654 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Much confusion has arisen in the public mind from the failure to 
recognize the radical difference between Gospel Christianity and The- 
ologic Christianity, the former consisting of the essentia of the New 
Testament, while the latter is the human presentation of it. The 
one is absolute truth, the other absolute belief; and so far forth as 
truth and belief may be radically different, so far may original Chris- 
tianity and formulated Christianity be radically different. It is clear 
that what passes for Christianity may be something else entirely, just 
as the Ptolemaic teaching passed for centuries as true astronomy. 

It must also be taken into the account that the difference between 
the several types of Christianity is as great as the difference between 
any single type and Christianity itself. Papal Christianity is a single 
type ; Protestant Christianity is a different type ; and quite possibly 
the objections urged against the one will not at all apply to the other. 
The iconoclast who assails theologic Christianity might be brought to 
acknowledge the beauty and to discern the truth of original Chris- 
tianity ; and the scientist who attacks Papal Christianity, as did Prof. 
Draper, might be disposed to look with favor upon some Protestant 
form of religion. It is imperative that these distinctions be kept in 
mind, for the Gospel idea has been jeopardized in the confused as- 
saults upon theologic and Papal representations of it. If all the 
Christianities — Gospel, Theologic, Papal, Oriental, and Protestant — 
were in perfect harmony in spirit, working by different methods for 
a common end, differing only slightly in form, and none whatever in 
structural elements, room for criticism would be indeed small; but 
the differences among them strengthen the suspicion that Christianity 
itself, at its very roots, is a multiplex religion, sending forth a variety 
of branches, bearing an endless variety of fruit, without unity of na- 
ture or the possession of common qualities. The number of Christian 
religions is a standing reproof of the Christian religion. History reveals 
a sectarian Christianity in opposition to original Christianity, the 
Roman hierarchy pointing to the former as an evidence of its depar- 
ture from the truth. 

Is the conglomerate religion known as Christianity identical with 
the revelations of the New Testament ? What explanation can Prot- 
estantism, Roman Catholicism, and Oriental Sectarianism give of 
themselves as offshoots of Christianity? That Christianity in its de- 
velopment has assumed these historic forms, and that they are mu- 
tually antagonistic will not be denied ; but one should be slow to 
infer any thing to the prejudice of Christianity on that account. The 
educational idea has produced Voltaire, Calvin, Shakespeare, Pollock, 
Latimer, Diderot, George Eliot, Byron, Ingersoll ; but with all its 
variety of product the idea is right per se, and should be encouraged. 



IMPERFECTION OF THEOLOGIC STRUCTURES. 655 

From the bosom of democracy have come treason, secession, slavery, 
socialism, as well as the ripest fruit of the highest civilization ; dem- 
ocracy is nevertheless politically sound. 

Carefully distinguishing between what Christianity is, and what 
has seemed to grow out of it, or what has been erected in its holy 
name, the suspicion raised against the true religion subsides. Theologic 
Christianity is the product of Church councils or theologians ; Papal 
Christianity is the product of a single ecclesiastical organization ; Ori- 
ental Christianity is the blossom of Eastern sectarianism ; Protestant 
Christianity is the exponent of a revised and progressive order of re- 
ligious faith. On these broad historic divisions no argument against 
the unity of Scriptural Christianity can be maintained. 

If, however, we should consider these four-fold divisions as con- 
stituting ecclesiastical Christianity in contradistinction to original or 
New Testament Christianity, and should seek the marks of difference 
between them, we might find in the former an exaggeration of non- 
essential particulars, and possibly an omission of fundamental truths 
that would justify the charge of the false in what passes for the Chris- 
tian religion. Kemembering that theologic structures are the work 
of human builders, such a result might also be expected. Even in 
framing a revealed religion into form, the imperfection of human 
handiwork will be visible, and religion may possibly suffer by its pas- 
sage into a human structure. Imperfect as the instrumental mani- 
festation may be, it is nevertheless indispensable, both to faith and 
an intellectual understanding of its contents. Dogmatic Christianity 
is as necessary as experiential Christianity. Keligion without truths 
is like a science without laws; and Christianity without the New 
Testament would be like physiology without the human body as its 
content and illustration. 

Over Dogmatic Christianity the great historic controversies were 
waged, and necessarily so, for they were the violent and persistent 
seekings after exact truth. Certain schools, interpreting the Gospel 
by cast-iron rules, issued certain documentary declarations of truth ; 
and pulpit, press, song-book, and prayer-circle have reflected these 
declarations, and fastened them upon the public mind. In this way 
theologic truth found a lodgment in human thought, and insensibly 
was substituted for Gospel truth. One school proclaims the sover- 
eignty of God ; another the freedom of man ; another declares both 
to be compatible, while a fourth discovers them to be irreconcilable. 
Theology is thus reduced to fractions instead of wholes, and Chris- 
tianity seems divided against itself. Unitarian ism exalts one truth 
to the exclusion of other essential truths, while Trinitarianism offends 
the mathematical spirit of certain precise theologies. Rationalism 



656 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

accepts truths that may be rationally discerned, while Pauline followers 
appropriate those that are "spiritually discerned." Universalism re- 
moves the bars to the heavenly life, while evangelical Christianity re- 
quires a soul-fitness for the enjoyment of the delectable abode. Touching 
the great doctrinal truths of religion, as espoused by theology, there 
is no uniformity of belief, and hence no bond of union. Must the- 
ology continue to dress like an Ishmaelite ? So long as the theolog- 
ical spirit, or the school-idea of religion is dominant, the Gospel idea 
of Christianity will be superseded, or at the least fail of the exalted 
recognition it deserves. 

In another aspect theologic Christianity is at war with itself. 
Concerning the ordinances of the Church, there is as much division as 
concerning the doctrines of the Gospel, while the strife for their ob- 
servance is even greater. For example, the Christian rite of bap- 
tism has been the innocent cause of much controversy and the source 
of feuds and alienations in Christian circles. While one ecclesiastical 
body concedes the validity of three forms of baptism, another recog- 
nizes the Scriptural character of but one, and goes so far as sub- 
stantially to unchristianize all other bodies not in harmony with it. 
Is the Gospel ambiguous in its teachings, contradictory in its exam- 
ples ? Or is the theologic spirit in the ascendency in Church life ? 
Concerning abstract truth one can imagine a ground for speculation, 
discussion, difference; but that an ordinance should provoke differ- 
ence is a mystery. Yet as it was a breach of etiquette at Ems that 
brought on the Franco-Prussian war, so whether immersion is only a 
mode of baptism, or the only baptism, has convulsed Churches, na- 
tions, continents. The same spirit appears in the interpretation of 
the Eucharist, one ecclesiastical body insisting on the doctrine of con- 
substantiation, another shouting tran substantiation, another rejecting 
both, and interpreting the sacrament as a monumental institution with 
moral purposes in view. One might suppose that in a matter of so 
little positive value there would be no difference, of opinion ; but it 
was great enough to divide Luther and Zwingli, and it is a dividing 
line between Protestantism on the one hand and Roman Catholicism 
on the other. Over the small matters of whether the Psalms should 
be sung or omitted at public "worship, whether one should stand or 
kneel when one prays, whether a musical instrument should be intro- 
duced into a church, or be cast out as offensive to pure devotion, a 
spirit of antagonism has been developed, and the spirit of amity, 
unity, and progress has been suspended. If these were questions of 
taste, expediency, or ecclesiastical mathematics they would not have 
mention here, but in the conflicts they excited an appeal was made 
to the "Word of God, the use of an organ or a song, or a form of wor- 



EXTRAVAGANT ESTIMATE OF LITTLE THINGS. 657 

ship becoming a profound theological question. Christianity itself 
was invoked to decide. 

The origin, organization, and purposes of the Christian ministry 
have also passed into the theological arena for settlement, and must 
be determined by Christian dialecticians according to exegetical rules 
and the genius of the interpretative spirit. This were well if the design 
were the protection of the sacred order from imposition; but one ec- 
clesiastical body ordains that the Christian ministry, outside of the 
alleged line of apostolical succession, is illegitimate, and its pulpits are 
not open to such uncalled and unrobed shepherds of the flock. Even 
this narrow and self-centered conception, wrung from supposed Scrip- 
ture, is the basis of a Churchly organization, just as the doctrine of 
election, equally untenable, is the basis of another, and as baptism 
by immersion is the corner-stone of still another. We are not writ- 
ing in defense of a particular doctrine of belief, or of a particular 
method of ordinance-observing, or of a single method of worship, 
but showing how in the hands of devout men Christianity has been 
distorted, and even prostituted, in support of doctrines, methods, and 
ceremonies quite incongruous to its spirit and design. If the world 
must judge of Christianity wholly by its theologic aspects, it is not 
surprising that criticisms have arisen and are multiplying ; indeed, the 
theologic spirit will provoke the critical spirit. If we must decide as 
to the nature of Christianity by the result of the attempts of Chris- 
tian men to pry into the secret councils of the Almighty on the 
one hand, or by the quantity of water used in an ordinance on the 
other, then it must appear too large on the one hand and entirely 
too small on the other, as a religion for this world. If baptisteries, 
genuflections, clerical robes, mathematical reprobations, and sacra- 
mental superstitions are the outward signs of the inward religion, or 
the essential contents of religion, then it can hardly hope for a long 
future among a civilized people. The religious mind demands more 
than the externalism of religion. Yet the history of Church con- 
troversies reveals the deplorable fact that small matters, the anise 
and the cumin, have provoked as violent an agitation, and led to as 
unreasoning* a division, both of religious sentiment and organization, 
as the weightier matters of Christianity. In a sense, therefore, the- 
ologic Christianity has been the source of the pseudodox in religion, 
as it has exalted out of all proportion those docrines and ceremonies 
which are by comparison with others non-essential to the purposes' of 
religion ; and by such exaltation it has given a false coloring to true 
Christianity and occasioned a grievous misunderstanding of its char- 
acter and objects. 

To even greater lengths of absurd interpretation has Papal Chris- 

42 



658 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

tianity gone in its appropriation of the Gospel, presenting it in a form 
scarcely recognizable by those supposed to be familiar with the teach- 
ings of its Founder. In addition to its exegetical work, it imposes 
traditional teaching upon its followers, and occasionally exercises the 
right of revealing doctrines not at all contained in the Word of God. 
By a varying exegesis, by old traditions, by new revelations, Papal 
Christianity poses as a religion as different from original Christian- 
ity as evolution is different from the Mosaic creation. According to 
its canons the Church is the true interpreter of the Bible ; the right 
of private judgment respecting revealed truth is forbidden ; and new 
truth must be received with the same unquestioning faith as old 
truth. This prepares the way for false teaching, fanaticism, intol- 
erance, and organized assault upon opposing faiths. 

The history of Roman Catholicism is in conformity to this antici- 
pation. By virtue of its prerogative to interpret the Bible and to 
add to it, it has produced such doctrines as auricular confession, the 
Immaculate Conception, prayers for the dead, purgatory and deliver- 
ance therefrom, priestly absolution, and the infallibility of the Pope. 
The last is the extreme of Papal claims, the highest notch of ab- 
surd pretensions on the part of religion. The Papacy itself, with its 
alleged foundation in the assumed primacy of St. Peter, and its at- 
tempted exercise of divine rights from Hildebrand to Leo XIII. , is 
a standing demonstration of the hypocrisy of Christianity, or the 
monstrous stupidity of Roman Catholicism. The sovereign claim of 
the Papacy to temporal power, by which it would appoint and depose 
rulers, frame the form of governments, dictate laws, and compel the 
subjection of nations to the Church, is a misrepresentation of the 
radical idea of Christianity, or Christianity is defective in its first 
principles. The equally supercilious claim of the Papacy to enforce 
its spiritual doctrines on believers and unbelievers by the threat of 
excommunication in this life and eternal torment after death, is preg- 
nant with mischief as a doctrine, and has wrought dismay throughout 
the world. What persecution has it not authorized ? Who kindled 
the martyr's fires? Who established the Inquisition ? Who inaugu- 
rated the massacre of St. Bartholomew ? The record of that organiza- 
tion against so-called heresy and liberty of thought ; against civil 
government, popular education, and scientific research ; against the 
rights of conscience, and the rights of religion in general, is such as 
to make one tremble as one reads it, to make the Christian heart 
thankful that its power is broken, to make humanity ashamed that 
in some sense it still stands for Christianity. 

Is Protestant Christianity a pseudo-religion in any respect ? Does 
it also partake of the liabilities of the preceding types, or is it a 



THE TAINT OF ROMAN CATHOLICISM. 659 

model exponent of Gospel elements? Considering its origin, and 
that uninspired men molded it into its present shape, and that the best 
religious minds differ from one another in exegetical construction, it 
is not surprising that even Protestantism is burdened with weaknesses, 
and supports errors which in the future it will abandon. 

In breaking away from the dominion of the Roman Catholic 
power, Luther naturally broke away from the human authority it ex- 
ercised, and held to many of the doctrines it presumed to teach. 
While the Reformation anchored itself in the thought of personal 
liberty, at the same time it inherited from the Church the spirit of 
its truths, many of which were Scriptural, and others only traditional, 
or additional to the old revelations. The inheritance was inevitable, 
both because Catholic teaching was not erroneous in every particular, 
and the dissolution of Luther's relation to the old Church had quite 
as much reference to authority as to doctrine. Similar instances, 
with similar results, have occurred elsewhere. John Wesley trans- 
ferred to Methodism many of the teachings of the Church of England, 
whose moral reformation he strenuously sought to accomplish, but 
whose doctrinal character was in great part unobjectionable. Luther 
could not forget all that the mother Church had taught him ; hence, 
it was natural that even by those things which he repudiated he was 
insensibly affected in his feelings and beliefs. From palpable errors 
in doctrine, and detected or authorized evils in practice, he separated 
himself by a distance too great to be retraced ; but in matters con- 
cerning which there was room for doubt, he was somewhat under the 
discipline of the old life. In its early stages Protestantism showed 
the taint of Catholicism, and it is questionable if the Christian Church 
is yet entirely free from that pestilential influence. To be sure, none of 
the open absurdities of the corrupt religion, such as auricular confes- 
sion, the legend of St. Peter, or the infallibility of the Pope, has 
taken root in the advanced faith ; but certain superstitions made 
sacred by age still attach to it, whose origin is rather papistical than 
inherent. For instance, the dogma of " baptismal regeneration,'" 
and the doctrine of consubstantiation, are relics, so to speak, of the 
days when the one religion broke from the other. The observance 
of special days, as Palm Sunday, Easter, and Whitsuntide, not at all 
objectionable, is of Roman Catholic origin, and here mentioned as an 
illustration of the influence of the one faith on the other. The in- 
tolerance that has characterized the history of the Papal Church is 
reproduced in the disposition of certain Protestant bodies to ostracize 
all Christians from the fold of Christ who have not become members 
thereof by their prescribed methods, and the acceptance of their form 
of faith. The custom of Lent, and the clothing of ministers in robes 



660 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

for the duties of public worship, have been transmitted to Protestant- 
ism. While in essentials Protestantism has been successful in its 
separation from Latin Christianity, and the divergence is constantly 
growing wider, the influence of the latter upon the former is not en- 
tirely extinct; on the contrary, it is believed by many that that in- 
fluence is too potent in our religious customs and forms of worship. 
Perhaps this relationship of custom, doctrine, and form, so objection- 
able now, may serve in the future as the basis of a union of the two 
antagonistic types of Christianity, and so justify what is now under- 
stood to be the infection of Romanism in the Christian world. 

By virtue of the antagonism of these types of religion, Christianity 
is unfairly represented ; it is supposed to be self-contradictory ; it 
stands out as divided against itself, which can only be true of error. 
The union of these rival religions, which can only take place by the 
abandonment of traditional teaching and superstitious dogma on the 
part of Roman Catholicism, and a pledge of fraternity on the ground 
of oneness in faith touching the essentials of truth on the part of 
Protestantism, will do much toward correcting the popular misunder- 
standing of what Christianity is and what it proposes. Until the two 
factions come together in the spirit of harmony, each will pursue its 
way as if it were a different religion, and as if Christianity were also 
a different religion from what it is, endangering both them and it. 

The exhibition of the defects of Theologic, Papal, and Protestant 
Christianity must now end, its purpose doubtless being apparent to 
the reader. Christianity is known to the world by the forms it has 
assumed, the fact being forgotten that the form may be false, while 
the original may be true. Theologic Christianity may be an error ; 
Papal Christianity may be inherently a superstition ; Protestant Chris- 
tianity may be a borrowed and approximately correct religion ; while 
original Christianity is essentially and eternally true. The pseudodox 
of Christianity is the pseudodox of its various types, while the anti- 
type of religion, or Christianity, is invulnerable in its constitution, 
and without a discoverable error of fact or teaching. Herbert Spencer 
refers to the ''Hebrew religion," meaning the entire Biblical sys- 
tem, as a "pseudo-religion," but Gospel Christianity, as distinguished 
from its types, we shall see is entirely destitute of pseudo elements. 
Separating it from the types by which it is known, it may be studied 
in its original character and contents, the only way, indeed, by which 
to discover its weaknesses, if there are any, and its excellences, if at 
all inherent or prominent. Is it in itself a superstition, or a truth? 
Does it abound in falsehoods, crudities, obsolete elements? Is it 
crowded with ambiguities, moral impossibilities, spiritual delusions? 
Is it a mystical rhapsody, an ideal hallelujah, a sentimental touch- 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL SPIRIT SUBORDINATE. 661 

stone? Is it religious magic? These questions reach in all directions, 
bringing into the discussion the truths, the personages, the institu- 
tions, and the projects of the New Testament ; for Christianity includes 
them all, and stands or falls with them. 

What is original, or Gospel Christianity? On opening the Bible, 
two religions at once are discovered, the one commonly called the 
Jewish, the other commonly known as the apostolic religion ; yet are 
they so related that the best elements of the one are reproduced in 
the other, and both constitute the single religion which passes by the 
name of Christianity. Original Christianity is that, therefore, which, 
beginning with patriarchs, lawgivers, and prophets, was completed by 
Jesus Christ and his apostles ; or, with Jesus Christ as its corner- 
stone, it is that religion which, including all truths made dimly known 
before his advent and by revelation, unfolded all essential truth from 
himself and by revelation, through chosen apostles, evangelists, and 
teachers. Christianity is the truth, or the religion of the whole Bible, 
in other words. It is this religion that is pronounced mythical by 
Strauss, and "pseudo" by Spencer. 

In this investigation of Biblical Christianity, it is important to 
keep before us only its fundamental truths, for these determine its 
character, and are the proofs of its divine origin. The attempt has 
been made to turn the incidental communism of the apostles, the 
single instance of feet washing, and the custom of the "holy kiss," 
into an argument against the Christian religion ; as well employ the 
fact of the existence of insects against the existence of God. Chris- 
tianity is not to be judged by the religious customs, the social states, 
the political ideas, or the domestic habits and private beliefs of the 
apostles ; it is a system of religion, founded on revealed truth, by which 
alone it can be judged, and any other judgment of it is irrelevant 
and superficial. 

Is Christianity philosophically false? No believer in the Scriptures 
will assert that they reveal a complete philosophical system, or that 
a philosophical system is at all conspicuous in the sacred volume ; but 
it is claimed that the philosophical revelations of the Scriptures are 
unqualifiedly and inherently true. We have nothing to do with the 
incompleteness of such revelations; it is only important that they, are 
true. In pagan and other religions, the philosophical spirit is dominant, 
while the religious spirit is secondary; in Christianity, the religious 
spirit is supreme, and the philosophical spirit is subordinate. Without 
exception, the Hindu religions, the Druidic worship, the Persian 
faith, the Egyptian rituals, and the Grecian and Roman mythologies, 
abound in philosophic speculation concerning matter, the creation 
of the world, and providential government, all seeming more anxious 



662 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

to solve these problems than to determine man's relation to God and 
the conditions of a future life. In all, speculation is the rule ; in 
Christianity, revelation is a fact. As philosophic speculations, the 
old religions are a failure ; as a philosophic revelation, Christianity is 
unquestionably true. 

The origin of the universe is rather a philosophic than a religious 
problem, yet do the Scriptures reveal it so definitely that the purest 
philosophy is compelled to bow to its truthfulness. Strauss sees 
" childishness" in the first chapter of Genesis, and reproaches Moses 
with ignorance of the Copernican theory ; but for all that the Mosaic 
astronomy, the Mosaic geology, and the Mosaic cosmogony, have sur- 
vived all other astronomies, geologies, and cosmogonies, and show no 
signs of decay and no disposition to retire. Materialistic evolution, 
finding Moses disputing its authority, began an assault upon his his- 
tory of creation, but expired before it finished its task ; while theistic 
evolution supported Moses, and shouted the verity of his records. 
Dr. McCosh, as a Christian evolutionist, sees no inherent inconsistency 
in the Mosaic account, and no incompatibility in it with a true idea 
of evolution. 

Such philosophical problems as the origin of man, the origin of 
languages, the nature of the soul, and the existence of God, as pro- 
found as they are dignified, and as absorbingly interesting as- they 
are comprehensive, the Scriptures determine with an exactness that 
astonishes the philosopher and with a fullness almost sufficient. That 
man is physical and spiritual, or earthly in body and divine in soul, 
the Scriptures teach ; and what philosophy has eclipsed the teaching ? 
Interpreting man thus, he is understood; by any other theory, he is 
a greater mystery than ever. The Bible does not reveal the origin 
of language, except as the natural property of humanity; but it 
does reveal the origin of the diversity of tongues. The linguistic 
faculty is as native to man as memory or imagination ; speech is as 
natural as walking or seeing. But the diversity of languages is the 
enigma of the etymologists ; yet it ought not to be. The diversity is 
a "confusion," a barrier to unity, the result of violated law, and the 
penalty of outraged justice. The philosophical fact has a moral hue, 
as every philosophical fact is more or less surrounded by a religious 
halo. Incomplete are these philosophical revelations, but, as hints or 
guides to truth, they are correct. In not a single instance is a false- 
hood apparent. Even if the miraculous is sometimes invoked, as an 
explanation of an event, as the standing still of the sun, or the 
dividing of the waters of the Red Sea, the philosophical spirit is not 
at all offended, for a miracle is a philosophical possibility, on the supposi- 
tion that there is a divine sovereign, and really the temporary proof of 



A DEVELOPMENT AND A REVELATION. 663 

his dominion in the natural .world. Miracle is philosophically consis- 
tent with Christianity, which characterizes the creative act as miracu- 
lous, and which reveals redemption as the supernatural purpose and 
power of God. In its facts, in its miracles, in its projects, it is phil- 
osophically self-consistent, and absurd only to those whose infidelity 
is of a cast that resists truth, whether rational in form or not. 
Christianity is philosophically true. 

Is it doctrinally true t Even in its doctrinal aspects, it may seem 
short of completeness; but, as a theological revelation, it is far in 
advance of itself as a philosophical revelation. Touching many 
things — as the nature of God, the process of regeneration, the abstract 
idea of immortality, and the method of the resurrection — the curious 
may ask questions, to which satisfactory answers are not returned by 
the sacred writers ; but, if the revelation on these subjects is not full, 
it is not false. Christianity is a revelation of truths, but not an ex- 
planation of truths. Revelation is not explanation. Revelation per- 
tains to facts ; explanation pertains to processes, analyses, unfoldings, 
and developments. Revealing facts, it withholds explanation. The 
mystery of Christianity is not so much the mystery of its facts, or the 
mystery of what it reveals, as it is the unknowableness of what is not 
revealed. Revelation, so far as it goes, is not mysterious ; it is the 
unrevealed that is mysterious and unknown. Often the charge of 
mystery in religion belongs only to the unrevealed, and not to the 
revealed. What is revealed, however, is not false. 

The crucial point relates to the content of revelation. What 
truth is revealed ? According to Dr. W. Robertson Smith, the truth 
of the Bible is rather a natural development than a revelation, an 
unfolding from simple, uncertain, and yet prophetic, forms in the 
earlier history of the Hebrew people, to the complete and stately 
proportions of New Testament doctrinal declarations. It is not in- 
cumbent upon us even to attempt to determine if Biblical truth is 
revealed or naturally developed truth, only so far as the claim of 
revelation is inseparable from the claim of truth. For, if the truth 
of the Bible can not be naturally developed truth, it must be revealed 
truth, or it is not truth. In the very nature of things, incarnation, 
the root-thought of Christianity, can not be an outgrowth of previous 
truth, except as the fulfillment of prophetic truth ; but the actual 
fact of incarnation is not a development, but a revelation. Likewise, 
the atonement can not be a mere development of previous and similar 
truths ; the fact had no predecessor, and the fact is the essence of 
revelation. The resurrection is not a developed truth, but a revela- 
tion. Some truths of the Bible may be accounted for by a process 
of development from previous seed-truths; but other truths are the 



664 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

product of revelation, and, while it is valuable to rescue the devel- 
oped truths from the imputation of being contradictory or false, it is 
especially required of us to deliver revealed truths from the slightest 
suspicion of inherent antagonism. 

In the general, it may be assumed that doctrinal truth, whether 
developed or revealed, involving God, the divine government, the 
soul, and eternal destiny, is absolutely free of inherent weakness and 
error. In its monotheism, in its incarnate basis, in its Messianic 
features, in its redemptive plan, aud in its eschatological forecastings, 
it is invulnerable on the ground of error. Whatever the rationalist 
may affirm of the Old Testament, and whatever changes in interpre- 
tation the new school of Biblical critics may require, the Old Testa- 
ment will remain unimpaired as the volume of truth. Mansel may 
apply rationalistic rules to revealed truth, and Strauss may insist that, 
by such rules, the whole superstructure is overthrown ; but, while it 
changes color by the rationalizing process, it does not lose its sub- 
stance or change its nature. Truth, even in apostolic hands, suffered 
somewhat by their inability to comprehend it. Let it be admitted 
that the apostles were mistaken in their views respecting the second 
coming of the Lord ; it does not prove that the doctrine of the 
second advent is false. Strauss makes the mistaken apprehension of 
the apostles a ground of objection to the doctrine itself; but, as usual, 
he fails to discriminate between the truth itself and the apostolic un- 
derstanding of it. Equally ignorant were the disciples of the spiritual 
nature of Christ's kingdom ; hence, they clamored for the restoration 
under divine leadership of the old Israelitic kingdom ; but this mis- 
take does not make against the spirituality of the religion of Christ. 
In the New Testament, side by side, are mistaken notions of Jews, 
Greeks, Romans, disciples, and apostles, and the truths of which the 
mistaken notions are entertained. The notions may be false ; the 
truths themselves are still unassailable. 

Contradictory doctrines are supposed to be taught in the Biblical 
documents, and are explained on the ground that Biblical truth is a 
development, which, in its various stages of unfolding, and affected 
by its environment, occasionally reversed itself and even turned a 
somersault, but, recovering itself, went on, and in its final form ap- 
pears substantially and honestly correct. A developed truth may 
exhibit the scars of the developing process ; a revealed truth can not 
be self-contradictory. Self-contradiction is destructive of the idea of 
revelation. Such ideas as the sovereignty of God and the freedom 
of the human will ; the omniscience of the Deity and the doctrine of 
foreordination ; the goodness of God and the reign of evil ; divine 
knowledge and human prayer ; personality, or human identity, and 



EXPLANATION OF ALLEGED CONTRADICTIONS. 665 

regeneration, faith, and rationalism, — are supposed to be among the 
contradictory teachings of Christianity. Because of apparent irrecon- 
cilable elements in such and similar truths, Schleiermacher proposed 
the Compromise Theology, or the suggestion that, by mutual conces- 
sions on both sides, the truth would be found in a moderate opinion of 
the great mysteries. Truth, however, is positive or negative ; it is not a 
compromise between mysteries. Tholuck struck the key-note of a settle- 
ment when he said that, "truth is not in the middle, but at the bottom." 
It is always at the bottom, at the foundation of things. The founda- 
tion can not be true and false ; contradiction is impossible ; mystery 
is possible. If, then, these truths are apparently antagonistic and can 
not be reconciled, it is a proof that they have not been clearly revealed ; 
they are revealed so far that we know them to be truths, but so 
dimly revealed are some of them that, like cathartic and emetic, 
they pull in contrary directions. In such a dilemma, no one would 
be justified in proclaiming either truth to be false ; he would be justi- 
fied in saying he did not quite understand them. 

By a like process other doctrines or teachings are brought into 
conflict, and the unity of Christian truth is sought to be disturbed. 
Consciousness after death and soul-sleeping ; eternal punishment and 
annihilation of the wicked ; one probation only, and a renewed 
chance hereafter; baptismal regeneration and the "new birth;" Uni- 
tarianism and Trinitarianism ; Predestination and Universalism ; 
Prescience and Contingency, — these, supposed to be supported by the 
Scriptures, are submitted as evidences that the Scriptures themselves 
furnish the proof against their own inspiration, and that they do not 
reveal truths. 

To this presentation of contradictory ideas in the New Testament 
the reply may be brief but definite, and in substance the reply to the 
apostolic misunderstanding of truth. What the truth is, and what 
the human understanding of the truth is, are two different facts ever to 
be remembered in the study of Christianity. More than once the 
Bible has been employed in defense of polygamy, slavery, war, in- 
temperance, and Sabbath-breaking, when, without controversy, its 
unit idea is monogamy, freedom, peace, temperance, Sabbath-keep- 
ing, and salvation. More than once has it been turned to the de- 
fense of two Sabbaths, two resurrections, two or three regenerations, 
three or four forms of Church governments, a multitude of Church 
worships, and many ecclesiastic creeds. The Bible is quoted by every 
body to sustain every thing, as if it were on all sides of all questions, 
showing the wealth of its revelations, but the almost universal mis- 
understanding of its truths! The apostles misunderstood and pre- 
pared ascension robes ; the Athenians misunderstood and laughed at 



666 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Paul ; the Pharisees misunderstood and crucified Christ ; the Papacy 
misunderstood, and what errors flowed ; Pusey misunderstood, and 
Saeramentarianism followed; Calvin misunderstood, and .predestina- 
tion sat on a pedestal at the front door of the Church, smiling at the 
few, frowning upon the many ; Socinus misunderstood, and the Uni- 
tarian germ grew ; Orson Pratt misunderstood, and polygamy flour- 
ished ; Luther misunderstood, and consubstantiation ruled at the 
altar, and converted the Eucharist into a semi-cannibalistic feast. 
The misunderstandings respecting the Scriptures are the misunder- 
standings of men ; the supposed contradictions of the Scriptures are 
the contradictions of the human mind in its effort to explore myste- 
ries not revealed ; and the errors of Christianity are the errors of the- 
ology. The truths of Christianity, separated from the errors of theol- 
ogy, are truths still; and, even allowing a want of harmony among 
its mysteries, its revealed facts can still resist the imputation of 
being false. 

Is Christianity religiously false? The estimate that forgets that 
Christianity is a religion, and not a philosophy or a theology, is nar- 
row, and falls short of a true appreciation of its internal spirit. Even 
if true in its philosophic revelations, and harmonious as a theologic 
system, it is of little value if it is false in its religious teachings 
and revelations. True as a religion, if proven false as a philosophy, 
no great harm is done ; but prove it false as a religion and true as a 
philosophy, and the world sinks hopelessly in darkness. 

As a revelation of religious truth, complaint has been made that 
it is utterly unsatisfactory, even if trustworthy, by reason of the re- 
serve it maintains respecting the problems in which the human mind 
has the highest interest. It reveals some things, but is silent touch- 
ing other things equally important. It veils the truth quite as often 
as it exposes it. It pretends to make known, but withholds at the 
critical point of interest. This is an old complaint with a good foun- 
dation ; that is, it is true that Christianity is far from being a com- 
plete revelation of truth. Touching spiritual processes, the nature of 
God, the ministry of evil; the state of the dead, and even the final 
condition of the race, there is not a revelation such as satisfies the 
curious, or knowledge such as can dispense with faith. The reason 
for the silence of the Scriptures on these subjects, as given by Dr. A. 
P. Peabody, namely, that it is because of the poverty of human lan- 
guage to express the divine thoughts, and that they are " beyond the 
range of any teaching of which we are susceptible," we regard in- 
sufficient; for the human mind is capable of a much larger under- 
standing of truth than it is possible to possess under the present lim- 
itations of revelation. We can know more if permitted to know. 



JOHN AND PHILO. 667 

The limitation of revelation is not so much owing to the imbecility 
of the human mind as to the wisdom of the divine Mind, which 
must regard further knowledge as unnecessary to the purposes of the 
present life. 

Not a few critics have been disturbed by the apparently borrowed 
character of many New Testament truths, such as the Logos of John, 
the Law-Gospel of Paul, and the Rabbinical traditions of Christ, 
'compromising, as they allege, the inspirational character of the truth, 
and so implicating it in hypocrisy. Speaking of John's Gospel, Mr. 
Alger says: "There is scarcely a single superhuman predicate of 
Christ which may not be paralleled with striking closeness * from the 
"extant works" of Philo, a "Platonic Jewish philosopher." It is 
true that Philo employs such words as " Logos" and the "first-begot- 
ten " in his writings, and it seems as if John had appropriated them, 
but the appropriation of phrases, popular words, proverbs, and teach- 
ings in no sense affects the question of the inspiration of John's Gos- 
pel, or of the New Testament. Paul resorts to Jewish idioms to 
express Christian ideas, and Christ turns to the Greek language for 
the most striking words to convey the truths that constitute the sub- 
stance of religious teaching ; but because philosophers, poets, mystics, 
Gnostics, Jews, and Greeks furnished words, phrases, and even sen- 
tences for the conveyance of Christian truth, it does not follow that 
Christianity is derived from Philo, Plato, Homer, or others, who may 
have coined the word thus appropriated. The doctrine of inspiration 
is compatible with the use of any word that properly expresses the 
truth, whether the word be pagan or otherwise. 

If it is meant that' the doctrines of the New Testament are pla- 
giarized from the philosophers, and, therefore, can not pose any 
longer as revealed truths, a more serious aspect envelops the inquiry. 
Such a supposition is likely to arise from a superficial comparison be- 
tween Philo and John ; but when it is remembered that John's aim 
in part was to counteract the prevailing Gnosticism of the age, and 
in part to exalt Christ to his true position as the Son of God, the use 
of terms and ideas prevalent in philosophical circles is at once ex- 
plained. But to assume that John's Logos is Philo's Logos is an in- 
excusable assumption ; to assume that incarnation, atonement, regen- 
eration, resurrection, and immortality are borrowed doctrines, can 
safely be met by denial or a demand for proof. As the ark of the 
tabernacle was carried about in carts, so divine thoughts were con- 
veyed in human vehicles wherever found, and without loss of their 
original character. 

Strauss intimates that many of the so-called virtues of Christian- 
ity belonged to previous religions and philosophies, as compassion to 



668 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Buddhism, and assistance of enemies to Stoicism, as if it made some- 
what against Christianity as an original religion, to find it inculcating 
the same. None but a dotard will claim an entire destitution of moral 
principle in other religions ; they had a mission ; they taught some 
truths and illustrated some virtues ; but it is the glory of Christianity 
that it magnified the obscure virtues of other religions, and added 
truths of which they had no types or foreshado wings. The virtues of 
Christianity, however, are not borrowed virtues; they are such as 
human nature in its best mood authorizes, or such as spring directly 
from the teachings of Christ. It is remarkable that if the Christian 
virtues are culled from other religions, only the true and exalted vir- 
tues were selected, for suicide, falsehood, murder, theft, and even 
parricide are justifiable under certain conditions in other religions. 
The omission of such virtues from the Christian religion is proof of 
the inspiring influence that guided in the selection of those which 
it inculcates. 

It has been observed, too, that what are regarded as honorable 
worldly virtues are not enumerated among religious virtues in the New 
Testament. Renan points out that heaven is not promised as the re- 
ward of military glory, and that religion has been impeached for its 
alleged silence touching the virtue of patriotism and the glory of 
political fidelity. Christianity is a religion ; its virtues are religious; 
it does not exalt worldly achievements, or those earthly conditions and 
honors to which the ambitious aspire. It is a misapprehension, how- 
ever, that it does not enjoin faithfulness in civil life and loyalty to civil 
government, for Christ said, " Render to Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's," and Paul ordered obedience to the powers that be. Worldly 
duties, however well performed, can not be substituted for religious 
duties, and the worldly spirit can not stand for the religious spirit ; this 
is the lesson of the New Testament. 

Strauss has a routine way of disposing of the truths of Biblical 
Christianity, as if they were literally false. The " so-called " fall of 
man he pronounces a " didactic poem ;" the ascension of our Lord is a 
symbolical representation of an idea, but to speak of it as an "ac- 
tual occurence is to affront educated people at this time of day ;" and 
all the so-called truths of the religion are symbols of ideas which ad- 
mit of a "moral application." Even if the Gospel, as a whole, is 
pure symbol, it represents something, which must be literally true. 
If the symbol is not the truth, the truth is back of it, or the symbol 
itself is false. 

Admitting that the Gospel is a symbol, the next step is to find 
the truth which it symbolizes, but Strauss goes not so far back. He 
denounces the truth, and thinks to reduce the Gospel to a shadow by 



MYSTICISM AND AMBIG UITY. 669 

reducing it to a symbol ; but in the name of honesty we demand to 
know what it symbolizes if not the very truth he denounces. The 
idea of a symbol is that it is a representative of something, but 
if the existence of the something is denied, then it is a solecism to 
use the word symbol at all. Strauss is driven into a corner by his 
jugglery of words. 

Christianity is the religion of mysticism, it is affirmed, and, there^ 
fore, unreal in its contents. Let it be said that it is a religion of 
spiritual forces, acting on the spiritual nature of man, and the origin 
of the suspicion of its mystical character is revealed. It is invisible 
force which the natural mind can not comprehend ; it is by experi- 
ence a renovation of the consciousness which unspiritual minds do not 
realize, and, therefore, it is pronounced whimsical and erroneous. In 
the days of Plotinus Christianity took the form of mysticism, but 
it is as improper to brand it a mystical religion on that account as it 
would be to define it a system of rationalism because Cousin, a Chris- 
tian believer, was a rationalist. There is no more mysticism in 
Christianity proper than in the transcendentalism of Emerson or the 
evolution of Spencer. 

Is not Christianity an ambiguous system of religion? If so, am- 
biguity may be found in its teachings, purposes, and agencies, the 
search for which must be immediately made. Ambiguity implies 
want of clearness, and allows double interpretations, which signify 
uncertain meaning and possible contradictions. Not a little effort 
will be required to establish such a charge against the teachings of 
Christ and his apostles. The doctrine of the^Trinity, more mysteri- 
ous than any other in the New Testament, and apparently based on 
a violated mathematical principle, is free from ambiguity, except in 
ambiguous minds. It has no double meaning; it does not mean one 
of several repugnant alternatives. It implies the mystery of relation, 
but is not a self-contradiction. Neither the atonement, nor the res- 
urrection of Christ, can be overthrown on the score of ambiguous 
meaning. Even the incarnation, with its unnatural process, is un- 
ambiguous ; it is overwhelming because of its magnitude. Running 
through the category of doctrine we would find that, mysterious as 
some teachings are, they are unlike the pagan oracles, whose answers 
admitted of every possible construction, and whose glory was their 
obscurity of form. 

As to its purposes, Christianity is as transparent as day. To re- 
deem the world from sin is its supreme object. Unambiguous in 
doctrine, unambiguous in purpose, it is equally unambiguous in its 
resources and agencies. Said the Master to his disciples: "All power 
is given unto me in heaven and in earth ;" "go ye, therefore, and teach 



670 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

all nations." Heavenly and earthly power join in the prosecution 
of the purposes of Christianity. There is no ambiguity here. Is not 
Christianity optimistic, Utopian, dreamy, a self -deceived, and deceiving, 
system of religion ? Is it not a visionary, fanatical, superstitious sys- 
tem, and doomed to defeat? That its undertaking is superhuman, 
requiring resources that are inexhaustible, a patience that knows no 
intermission, and a hope that is everlasting, can not be doubted ; but 
what would be fanaticism in other religions is reality in Christianity. 
It is not the religion of false hopes, but of prospective triumph 
through the aid of the higher powers. It is the outlook of Christian- 
ity that answers all insinuations of utopianism, and turns slowly into 
history the impossible. 

The pseudodox in Christianity is yet to be found. It is not in its 
philosophical revelations; it is not in its doctrinal revelations; it is not 
in its religious revelations ; it is not in Moses, Paul, Christ ; it is not in 
the Old Testament, and it is not in the New Testament; if anywhere, it 
is in the forms of Christianity, which will do well to take heed to 
themselves, and return to the fountain-head for healing, purification, 
and blessing. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE DIAGNOSTIC OE CHRISTIANITY, OR EXPERIENCE 
THE PHILOSOPHIC TEST OE RELIGION. 

WHEN the Emperor Trajan was passing through Antioch, Ig- 
natius seized the opportunity of advocating in his presence 
the Christian religion, well knowing that it would end in his martyr- 
dom. He explained his title — Theophorus — as meaning a person " who 
has Christ in his heart," and, when pressed for a more definite 
statement, confessed in specific terms that he carried the Deity with 
him, or partook of his nature and life. For this strange confession 
the holy man was condemned to the amphitheater of wild beasts in 
Rome, and joyfully suffered a martyr's death in expectation of a mar- 
tyr's crown. 

The religion of Ignatius is the religion of Christianity — the re- 
ligion of experience, or the new reality of consciousness, a study of 
which involves an inquiry into its origin, processes of development, 
contents, or categories of facts "and laws, and relation to character 
and destiny. That Christianity, either as a truth, or as a life-impart- 
ing power, may be incorporated with individual history, becoming its 



COMMON TESTS OF RELIGION. 671 

inspiration, regeneration, sanctification, or its guiding and redemptive 
source, the Scriptures certainly teach, and teach it as the vital and 
final test of the truth of religion. 

To make clear this statement, as well as to enforce it, we must 
distinguish between the tests applied to other religions and philoso- 
phies, and this exceptional and sufficient test of Christianity. The 
common test of religions is their history in their relation to civil 
government, domestic life, individual pursuits, and literary achieve- 
ments of the people adopting them, together with the moral life pro- 
duced by them. The historic test is the time-test of all things, of 
nature as well as religion, of God as well as man. In its light we 
may read of Brahminism and Platonism, of theocracy and democracy, 
of civilization and barbarism, of skepticism and Mohammedanism, of 
all religions, all philosophies, all beings, all things. To this primor- 
dial test Christianity must likewise submit. Its history of facts, re- 
lations, incidents, truths, and effects ; its prophecies, miracles, methods 
of growth, and plans of conquest ; its adaptations, powers, promises, 
and certainties, make an argument of irresistible strength in its own 
defense. Tested by history Christianity is a surviving and fulfilling 
religion. 

Another common test of religions is the character and number of 
their followers. If the cultured classes accept a form of religion ; 
if the thinkers of the age, scientists, poets, historians, and philos- 
ophers, may be quoted as the friends of a particular religious faith ; 
if kings and queens are its honest promoters and defenders, then it 
may boast of an influential, though by no means a conclusive, argu- 
ment. On this estimable ground Christianity may appeal with great 
confidence for the world's favor. Its followers are not only numerous 
and increasing every day, but they are also from the best classes and 
the highest ranks in human society. Christianity is the religion of 
the school, as well as the street ; it is the religion of culture, as well 
as ignorance ; in palaces as in hamlets, in the homes of luxury as in 
the dwelling-places of poverty, are those equally ready to die for Im- 
manuel. The martyr-spirit is still in the Church and the world. 

A more specific test of the vitality of religion, to which all relig- 
ions prefer more or less to appeal, is the supernatural character of 
their teachers, or teachings ; that is, the religion must appear to be 
supernatural. Never has a religion gone forth as purely, or exclus- 
ively, of human origin. In a sense it must appear to be from God ; 
it must expose a supernatural stamp. For this reason every religion, 
however incongruous in its teachings, abounds with the marvelous, 
the naturally impossible, the miraculous; the supernatural is essential 
to religion. If the religion is essentially false, absurdities, crudities, 



672 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

superstitions, and hypocrisies are employed to meet the demand for 
the supernatural; it must introduce the supernatural in form or by 
pretense, or perish. As might be expected, while the historic test is 
exposing the hollowness of the supernatural claim of many religions, 
the supernatural character of Christianity is becoming more luminous 
with the passage of the centuries ; as others expire, it survives and 
unfolds. Claiming to be strictly supernatural in its Founder, teach- 
ings, mission, and results, it is demonstrating itself with the lapse of 
time, and stands or falls as this claim is maintained. 

Neither history, social support, nor supernatural claim, nor all to- 
gether, furnish unanswerable testimony to the truth of Christianity, 
To such proofs other religions resort; such proofs Christianity em- 
ploys ; but they now begin to diverge, Christianity employing a proof 
not possible to other religions, and standing alone in its appeal to 
it. The proof of experience is the philosophic proof of Christianity. 
When a German thinker assumes that religion * ' is nothing more nor 
less than a belief in conflict with experience," he exhibits an ignorance 
both of what religion is as a system of truth, and of what it is by ex- 
perience. When Spencer alleges that the " subject-matter" of religion 
is that which passes the "sphere of experience," he exhibits the same 
ignorance. When Hume objected to a miracle on the alleged ground 
that it is contrary to experience, he was ignorant of what he was 
saying, and misunderstood both miracle and experience. His argu- 
ment, refuted as often as it has been repeated, is valuable only for 
the single thought that experience is a test of particular truths, or, 
comprehending more than Hume intended, the test of religion. If 
the test of miracle is experience, then the religion which miracle sup- 
ports may also be tested by experience. 

The experience-philosophy of modern times can not object to the 
application of its particular dogma to ascertain the validity or sound- 
ness of religious truth, or religion. A philosophic treatment of relig- 
ion requires that it be submitted to the philosophic test of human 
experience. Galen, the physician, regarded experience as the source 
of knowledge. In accord with the physician, we affirm that an ex- 
perience of Christianity is the key to a knowledge of it, and the 
means of its verification, and that if it is impossible to experience it 
its claim to a supernatural origin is invalidated. If its addresses to 
the soul awaken no response ; if its attempted reconstruction of char- 
acter turns out to be superficial and delusive ; if it does not become 
a fact of consciousness ; then it must surrender its claims, and yield 
to other religions. By the one test it rises or falls. 

Before deciding upon the nature of religious experience, or deter- 
mining the categories of religious consciousness, it is important to 



OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE. 673 

understand what it is that experience proposes to test and establish. 
Without reviewing religions, it is evident that "natural religion," 
and the "religion of humanity," justify themselves partly on the 
ground of their alleged harmony with experience, and that, if the 
test of experience is supreme, they must be accepted as genuine re- 
ligions. So far as natural religion is based upon the facts of nature, 
such as the unity of the universe, the laws governing planetary motion 
and life, the correlation of forces, and the conservation of energy, it 
is a legitimate religion ; and, so far as the religion of humanity is in 
harmony with the highest intuitions of the soul, it is a legitimate re- 
ligion. It is not clear, however, that natural religion is within the 
sphere of experience, or that even the so-called religion of humanity, 
which may include aesthetics and morality, enters into consciousness, 
and becomes the subject-matter of the inner life. The facts of naturaj 
religion are within the scope of observation, or objective experience. 
They lie outside the inner life, and are foreign to a subjective experience. 
Christianity belongs to the subjective realm, addresses the spirit of 
man, and takes root in the invisible life within. Natural truth may 
be tested by objective experience; supernatural truth, by subjective 
experience ; and one is as reliable as the other. If the fact of gravi- 
tation may be tested by the objective experience, or objective mind, 
the fact of regeneration may be tested by the subjective experience, 
or subjective mind. As the highest experience is subjective, so the 
highest truth which it tests must be supernatural. The province of 
experience, as a test of truth, natural and supernatural, is, therefore, 
clearly defined, and its application to Christianity in its supernatural 
character is certainly admissible. 

As a system of religious truth, Christianity may be tested by ex- 
perience. This does not mean that every truth of the Bible may be 
subject to the same test, for the scientific order of creation, as given 
by Moses, the miracle at the Red Sea, the fall of Jericho at the sound 
of horns, and the victory of Elijah on Carmel, are not within the 
range either of our objective or subjective experience ; they may be 
vindicated, however, by other and adequate tests. But the religious 
truths of Christianity may be comprehended, tested, and sustained by 
subjective experience ; in other words, revealed religion may be vin- 
dicated by the subjective, as natural religion is vindicated by the ob- 
jective, experience. 

Nor is it meant that Christianity, in its wholeness as truth, may 
not be defended and maintained by other methods than that from ex- 
perience. Either of two methods of reasoning, or both, have been 
and may be employed in the investigation and development of relig- 
ious truth, and in a rational exposition of Christianity they can not 

43 



674 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

be ignored. Inductive reasoning, or that method which Bacon ap- 
plied in the investigation of physical facts, and which led him from 
particular facts to universal truths, and deductive reasoning, which, 
implies the application of a universal principle to a particular fact, 
may be employed in the ascertainment of the fundamental truths of 
Christianity. By these methods, explanations, defenses, and vindica- 
tions without number of revealed religion are possible. 

While Christianity is a truth, it must not be forgotten that, ac- 
cording to its own teaching, it is a revealed truth, and therefore is 
not a first or primary truth. Some of the truths of revealed religion, 
as the mouotheistic idea, are primary; but Messianic truth is not 
primary, it is revealed. As Christianity is a revealed system of truth, 
the usual criteria of truth, in reasoning or otherwise, can not be ap- 
plied to it. Leibnitz insists that a characteristic of fundamental 
truth is its necessity. Necessity looks out of a mathematical axiom ; 
but internal necessity does not belong to Christian truth. Self-evi- 
dence is another supreme characteristic; but many truths of Chris- 
tianity are not self-evident. They require illumination, analogy, 
explanation, before they can be believed, and even then many reject 
them. The ball is round — this is self-evident so soon as one observes 
it. Immortality is not a self-evident truth, nor atonement, nor incar- 
nation. They need to be demonstrated or revealed. According to 
Dr. McCosh, "universality is the tertiary test" of fundamental truth. 
All men believe in such truth. Revealed religion can not bear this 
test; it is not a summary of fundamental or first truths. By these 
criteria Christianity is not to be judged. It is a revelation; induc- 
tively and deductively, it may be vindicated, but its supreme test or 
criterion is experience. 

The test of revelation or supernatural truth is its involution in 
experience. Truth is clear only as it is apprehended by the conscious- 
ness. An intellectual perception of truth is incomplete, being prelim- 
inary to further unfoldings and analyses ; but one may be deluded by 
the belief that a mathematical or intellectual study of supernatural 
truth is all that is required. A skeptic may apply intellectual tests, 
with mathematical precision, to such truth, and seem to detect error in 
its substance and to its very center. He may be in the neighborhood 
of fruth, and not find it, as one may sail over the ocean, ignorant of 
the pearls in its depths. Supernatural truth takes a concrete form 
in the Scriptures, but they must be searched, studied, analyzed, if the 
truth be found. The truth is there, but hidden like law in matter ; 
it is there, but flashes as a mystery, and requires searching; it is 
there, but like oxygen in the atmosphere, and ages may come 
and go before it is known. Abbe" Winkleman, in his exhortation to 



A TRUTH AND -A LIFE. 675 

students of art to study the Apollo Belvidere as a model of beauty, 
observed that at first they might not discover any beauty in it ; but 
they must study it again and again, " for," he said, "I tell you there 
is beauty there." The traveler stands in the presence of the pyramid 
of Cheops, disappointed at first with its apparent want of magnitude ; 
but, as he walks around it, enters its labyrinthine passages, and ascends 
to the summit, he is overwhelmed with its proportions, and pronounces 
it the greatest architectural pile of man. Thus Christianity, as a sys- 
tem of truth, does not impress the soul at first as supernatural ; or, if 
supernatural touches are felt, they are not comprehended ; the whole 
is seen in diminished aspects ; but, as one becomes receptive and sym- 
pathetic, en rapport with truth, it unfolds, enlarges, and begins to 
carry him beyond himself, until he gazes upon things not possible to 
describe, and is finally lost in the mysteries of the eternal. 

In its process of development the greatest truths are glimpsed, 
appreciated, and determined, as Monotheism, Providence, Messiaship, 
Regeneration, Responsibility, and the Future Life. They stand as 
the central facts of religion, and are appropriated by the intellectual 
investigator as the key to all else that may be found. Revealing 
truth, Christianity emphasizes itself as an intellectual religion ; it 
satisfies the aspiration of mind for truth ; it quickens intellectual in- 
quiry, and leads human thought through the mazes of mystery and 
obscurity into the clear sunlight of the highest truth. An intellectual 
religion, or a religion that conducts the mind to truth, or flashes the 
truth upon the mind, must be true ; a religion that reveals God, with 
all that belongs to the one great idea of God, must be from God ; a 
religion that reveals a Messiah, with all that grows out of Messiah- 
ship, must be divine ; a religion that is new to man, pointing out the 
way of restoration to intellectual greatness, can not be of man, but 
must have an eternal or supernatural source. Such a religion is 
Christianity. 

An intellectual or truth-revealing religion, however valuable, is 
not altogether sufficient. An experience of religion involves more 
than an intellectual knowledge of religion ; that is, there is a differ- 
ence between an intellectual and a spiritual apprehension of the 
truth. Christianity is not only truth ; it is also life. As truth, it 
appeals to the mind; as life, it quickens the soul. As truth, it is 
light; as life, it is power. Embracing religious truth, the mind is 
enlarged, and reaches at once into the infinities ; receiving supernatu- 
ral life, the soul opens its gaze upon God, and expands into God as 
the ages roll and eternity dawns. The former is a necessary expert 
ence ; the latter is the greater experience, as life is better than light. 
A more prominent contrast arises between the exclusive nature of 



676 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Christianity as an intellectual religion and its exclusive nature as a 
spiritual religion. As an intellectual religion it does not include 
itself as a spiritual religion ; as a spiritual religion it does include 
itself as an intellectual religion. One may accept Christianity in 
the intellectual, and not in the spiritual sense ; but if one accept it 
in the spiritual, he must also in the intellectual sense. The intellectual 
does not include the spiritual ; the spiritual includes the intellectual. 

A spiritual experience of truth, or a deep, inviolable instinct of 
religion, Christianity begets, and demonstrates itself by its spiritually 
begetting power. Other religions may inspire intellectual reverence 
for truth, but they are incapable of negotiating spiritual relations 
with God. Philosophy asserts truth to be the objective end of its 
pursuit ; but of spiritual truth it has no conception, and really denies 
its existence. As explained by the modern philosophic teacher, re- 
ligious experience is a refined state of the emotional life, or a regu- 
lation of the sentiments by certain religious principles, which may be 
pronounced mystical, fanatical, or superstitious, as the investigator is 
inclined. Intellectual experience or intellectual perception of truth is 
granted; emotional experience, or the emotional assent to religious 
truth, is possible ; but spiritual experience, or the sympathetic union 
of the soul with truth by which it is regenerated and sanctified, is 
held to be an assumption, requiring proof. 

Is spiritual experience a fiction or a reality? This is a root- 
question, determining the validity of Christianity as a spiritual relig- 
ion. The genuineness of so-called spiritual experience is sometimes 
questioned on the supposition that it is exclusively emotional in its 
character, and that vacillation and superficiality, characteristics of 
an emotional religion, are not the appropriate signs of a supernatural 
religion. Matthew Arnold pronounces the spiritual state as exclu- 
sively moral in character, but intensified by emotion in action. It is 
granted that Christianity is an emotional religion, but it is believed 
that that which belongs to it as an emotional religion invalidates its 
claim as a spiritual religion. The two are held to be incompatible ; 
they can not co-exist in the same soul at the same time. As an 
emotional religion, Christianity is trustworthy, because the emotional 
nature of man is trustworthy. The spirit of fear that seizes one when 
in danger and leads to an escape from it, is not a disadvantageous 
spirit; the spirit of hope that leads one on through reverses until 
one wins again, is a most helpful spirit. In their relation to charac- 
ter, the emotions are fundamental, and if religion works in and by 
the emotions, or interacts with the emotional nature, it has quite as 
strong a hold upon man as when it interacts with his intellectual 
nature. "Without the emotional nature man would be as cold as a 



PURIFICATION OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 677 

marble statue, and without religion the emotional nature would in- 
volve man in moral anarchy. Buckle has said that "the emotions 
are as much a part of us as the understanding ; they are as truthful, 
they are as likely to be right. They have their logic and their 
method of inference." 

Now, if Christianity works itself into the emotions, eliminating 
all carnal tendency, and subjects them to spiritual discipline and 
transformation, a government of self-control is at once installed over 
the life, the advantages of which can not be computed. What is 
life ? Is it thinking, or feeling, or both ? What is thought but a 
state of consciousness? What is sensation but an expression of con- 
sciousness ? Christianity, as thought, finds its way into the thinking 
of men, and is an intellectual religion ; Christianity, as life, finds its 
way into the sensibilities of men, and is an emotional religion. Per- 
haps its greatest work is on the emotional nature, which, even more 
than the intellectual, is in need of repair and purification. It touches 
first the springs of life, and careers through the hopes and fears, the 
desires and affections, the appetites and lusts of men, casting out, 
restraining, refining, and regulating, until the emotions are as obedi- 
ent to spiritual law as the restless seas to physical law. Religion, 
says Julius Muller, is affectionate communion with God. It is the 
alliance of the affections or the emotional life, purified and renewed, 
with God ! The sources of life are corrupt, the thinking, feeling, and 
acting of men bearing witness to the corruption. Christianity strikes 
for the center of being, involving radical changes in the intellectual 
and emotional natures, bringing the one into harmony with truth, 
and the other into sympathy with purity. 

Spiritual experience, involving both the intellectual and emotional, 
is higher than the one and deeper than the other ; it is more pro- 
found than intellectual conviction and more permanent than emo- 
tional assertion. It is a transformation of the inner life, of which 
thought and feeling are reliable exponents; it is more than knowl- 
edge, it is more than emotion ; it is the essence of life, of which 
spirit-power is the best exponent. Adequately to understand spiritual 
experience, its categories or the contents of spiritual life must be 
enumerated and so placed that it will stand as a separate experience, 
both from the intellectual and emotional states which religion super- 
induces. Truth apprehended spiritually appears differently from the 
same truth apprehended intellectually or emotionally. In the latter, 
the forms of truth only are perceived ; in the former, the essence of 
truth is cognized and appropriated. 

The foundation of experience is consciousness. By consciousness 
we mean, using Leibnitz's suggestion, the central monad, or the unit 



678 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

of being with psychical predicates, or the permanent sensation of 
life. Within the life-center, or upon the psychical unit, a spiritual 
work is excited and performed, resulting in the spiritual intensity of 
being and the purification of the life-ground. As the spiritual work 
is within the realm of life, so its first recognition will be by the life 
itself, or consciousness. The source of spiritual knowledge is not in- 
tellectual inquiry or emotional states, but the introspective search 
of consciousness, the affidavit of life to life. Sir William Hamilton 
defines consciousness as a "comprehensive term for the complement 
of our cognitional energies." Dr. James Rush employs consciousness 
as "a term to signify the knowledge which the mind has of its own 
operations." Dr. Porter says, " Natural consciousness is the power 
which the mind naturally and necessarily possesses of knowing its 
own acts and states." Consciousness is the region of spiritual life, 
and the. source of spiritual knowledge. As it embraces the whole 
life, it also embraces changes in the life, and an apperception of the 
changes as and when they are wrought. The first revelations of 
spiritual life are to consciousness; afterward, to the various mental 
faculties and the various emotional conditions of being. 

The degree of revelation of spiritual life to consciousness can not 
be fully stated. The Roman Catholic Church holds that the soul is 
not conscious of spiritual regeneration, which it teaches is effected by 
the manipulation of the priesthood, and must be accepted by faith on 
the part of the subject. This is the doctrine of unconscious spiritual ex- 
perience, which so infuriated Luther that it not only drove him from 
the old Church, but also led him to proclaim the doctrine of a con- 
scious salvation and a conscious union with Christ. The recognition 
of spiritual life by the consciousness is the testimony to its existence, 
and an absolute necessity in the nature of the work involved. All 
the contents of consciousness may not be recognized by the under- 
standing, but so radical a work as the regeneration of the conscious- 
ness can not occur without the consent of the understanding, and 
without the knowledge of the subject in whom the work is wrought. 
Experience is the outgrowth of consciousness, as consciousness is the 
ground of experience. Schleiermacher taught that "religion is not a 
system of dogmas, but an inward experience" which is the same thing 
as saying it is the experience of consciousness. 

This goes to the roots of being ; this gets into the depths of life. 
Behind consciousness, one can not go; as far back as consciousness, 
religion must go, or its work is superficial. The sinfulness of human 
nature, or the recognition of an internal evil principle, in man is 
one of the categories of religious experience. To establish the fact 
of the reign of evil in the world, it is not difficult ; but to establish 



RECOGNITION OF SIN AND ATONEMENT. 679 

the reign of evil in personal life, some proof is required. Prior to 
his departure, the Master assured his disciples that, after his separa- 
tion from them, the Spirit would come and " reprove the world of 
sin," conveying the idea that, through the Spirit's ministry, sin would 
be fully recognized. To " reprove" means to lay bare, expose, dem- 
onstrate. The Master meant that the Spirit would demonstrate to 
human consciousness the fact, nature, processes, and effects of sin, 
and powerfully incline the mind to its contrary, holiness. Philosophy 
failed in its knowledge of the nature of sin. In ancient times it 
knew not what sin is, and in modern times it apprehends not the 
nature of the world's- irregularity. Falsehood, jealousy, revenge, 
murder, suicide — these philosophy has sanctioned, because evil as evil 
was not properly discovered. To assume that evil is the friction be- 
tween matter and spirit, or that it emerges from the struggling char- 
acter of spirit, is not fully to define it. A demonstration to the 
consciousness of what sin is in essence, in its relation to God, in its 
bearing on the divine government, and in its effect on character, is 
required if it be understood ; and Christianity furnishes the demon- 
stration in the offices of the Holy Spirit and the revelations of the 
Sacred Word. In this respect, Paul eclipses Plato, and John Wesley 
reveals more than Emerson. Religious experience, or the passage 
into spiritual life, involves the full recognition of the character of 
sin, with its consequences and relations. 

To the problem of sin is annexed the problem of atonement or 
redemption, and a demonstration of the one is accompanied by a 
revelation of the other. Spiritual recognition of sinfulness is followed 
by a spiritual recognition of atonement. Christianity reveals both 
the fact of sin and the remedy for it. One's spiritual eyes opened, 
the Cross is as quickly discerned as the Pit. The dreadful thought 
of ruin is succeeded by the exhilerating hope of recovery. First ap- 
prehending the atonement as a historic fact, the consciousness admits 
it into personal relations, and feels its uplifting power. From that mo- 
ment the atonement is no longer a historical event, but a personal fact ; 
no longer an external achievement, but an internal experience. The 
transformation of the external fact into internal character, or a his- 
toric event taking root in human consciousness, or truth converted 
into life, is a most wonderful event in human experience. It is the 
crisis of eternity respecting the individual, or the crisis of the indi- 
vidual respecting eternity. Yet atonement is a category of spiritual 
experience. 

The full accomplishment of the redemptive agency of Christianity 
terminates in the holiness of the subjects in whom it has unrestricted 
operation. Holiness is the chief characteristic of the Christian t as it is the 



680 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

central idea of revelation, and the exalted grace of Deity. It is the out- 
come of Christianity. Constantine clothed himself in a white garment 
for baptism, and in his last years slept on a white bed, in token of 
the holiness which religion required, and to which he sincerely 
aspired. Religion is holiness; holiness is religion. Christianity is the 
one only as it is the other. In that mystical spirit for which the 
Pythagoreans were famous, they symbolized righteousness by the 
number three, some say by the number five, and others by the num- 
ber nine, intending that, whatever number was used as the symbol, 
it should represent the idea of completeness, harmony, and unity. 
Righteousness is spiritual harmony with spiritual things; it is the 
ground of spiritual unity in the universe ; it is the source of com- 
pleteness in mankind. 

It is regretted that the theological schools do not agree touching 
righteousness as a fact of experience, for one insists upon the doctrine 
of "imputed righteousness," as contrary to the idea of inherent 
righteousness, and another, more rationally and Scripturally, upon 
the doctrine of "imparted righteousness," or an inwrought experience 
of holiness as the condition of final salvation. A unity of view on 
the basis of experience is certainly desired. Imputed righteousness is 
an object of faith ; imparted righteousness the subject-matter of ex- 
perience. Both are consistent; the former may exist without the 
latter ; the latter can not exist without the former ; hence, it is more 
comprehensive and just as personal on one side as it is divine on the 
other. A personal divine righteousness or holiness, the glowing factor 
of the divine nature, concreted in human personality, is the possible 
heritage of a believer in Jesus Christ. This is the consummation of 
religion, the flower of experience. 

In this connection, the following question seems to be relevant: 
Is the supernatural element in experience the root or the crown of 
the moral life ? Does religious experience originate in a supernatural 
impulse? or, springing out of a religious germ within man, does it 
terminate in its development in a supernatural character? Dr. Mar- 
tineau assumes that the supernatural is the crown of the religious 
life ; we assume that it is the root of all religious experience. With- 
out a supernatural beginning, religious experience is wholly impossi- 
ble ; without the root, there can be no crown. The attempt to sepa- 
rate root and crown, or distinguish between the religious elements in 
the initial stages of experience and the consummation in holiness, is 
likely to involve one in a misunderstanding of the whole subject, as 
it is an attempt to separate similars and disjoin the essential extremes 
of a developed religious life. The inception of experience is the 
prophecy of its fulfillment; the beginning is the root of the develop- 



THE CHRISTIAN A NEW INCARNATION 681 

merit ; and the consummation is the completion of what existed in the 
earliest stages of experience. The beginning is holiness in an embry- 
onic state; the consummation is holiness completed. The root is 
holiness ; the crown is holiness. Holiness, root and crown, is a category 
of experience. 

As the play of Hamlet is impossible without Hamlet, so Chris- 
tianity is impossible without Christ. Christianity is Christ. Any 
consideration of the one presupposes the consideration of the other, 
and any religious experience, rooted in or related to the one, bears a 
corresponding relation to the other. One of the categories of experi- 
ence must be Messiahship, the spiritual center of religion. Without 
Christ, incarnation, atonement, resurrection, immortality, are fables; 
with him, they are living truths, to be preached to all men. The 
vitality of religious experience wholly depends on its connection with 
Christ, as all religious truth depends upon him as the truth. Intel- 
lectual opinions, beliefs, creeds, superstitions, are possible without 
Christ; but experience of truth is only possible as Christ is experi- 
enced. The experience of Christianity is the experience of Christ, or 
the reproduction of his life in the soul. It is the spiritual procreation 
in man of what is in Christ, or of what Christ is in nature. The 
Christian is a new incarnation of Jesus Christ. He is God manifest 
again in the flesh. In this highest sense, Christianity is the life of 
the world, imparting to it the God-given life of its Founder, and 
building it up in his likeness, so that the angels in heaven and 
human beings on earth may appear to be, and are, the children of 
one Father. 

Into this experience are crowded thoughts of the future life, in- 
volving the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, 
and final rewards and punishments. Heaven and hell arise before 
the spiritual vision as the final facts of religion ; they are the last 
truths, as creation, sinfulness, atonement, regeneration, and holiness 
are the first in the system of religion. Heaven with its glories and 
hell with its horrors are apprehended in their vividness, and affect the 
religious life in the growing stages of spiritual experience. Experi- 
ence is the cure of skepticism touching the final truths of religion. 
No doubt clouds the eye as it gazes into the future. Spiritual ex- 
perience is a demonstration of the truth of all the Scriptures teach 
as to the final disposition of the righteous and the wicked, and the 
divine government never appears so firm and so holy as when it moves 
forward to the execution of its plans respecting the future of its sub- 
jects. One of the categories of religious experience is a clear-sighted 
view, according to the Scriptures, of the justice and holiness of the 
divine administration in its settlement of human affairs, awakening 



682 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the sense of responsibility and inspiring carefulness in life, as but few 
other truths are able to do. 

Spiritual experience is so comprehensive, both in its truth-con- 
tents and in its relation to Christ, that an exhaustive list of its cate- 
gories must not be undertaken ; we, therefore, stop with those given. 
To such experience belong all there is of Christianity in its theistic, 
Messianic, redemptive, and eschatological revelations, which become 
the root and ground of the Christian life. The complete Christian 
life is Christianity completed in the life. Alexander Bain attributes 
character to pigment ; we attribute Christian character to Christian- 
ity. Herbert Spencer makes " complete living" possible as it conforms 
to naturalistic standards and laws ; we see that it is possible only as 
it is a supernaturalistic development of a supernaturalistic principle 
of life implanted by Him who is Life and hath promised it to all who 
desire it. 

The perplexing part of the subject is the process by which Chris- 
tianity is reduced to a spiritual experience. Intellectual assent to 
Christianity, or an intellectual perception of its truth, is less mys- 
terious than the spiritual appropriation of truth ; indeed, it is a ques- 
tion if the former is a mystery at all. Intellectual changes, involving 
reversal of sentiments or adoption of new truths, are psychological 
facts within the range of analysis. A change from atheism to theism, 
or from Unitarianism to Trinitarianism, is or may be purely intel- 
lectual, important enough to be worthy of notice, but not profound 
enough to stand for Christian experience. An intellectual regenera- 
tion may be accomplished through psychological laws, with which we 
are familiar ; spiritual regeneration is more than a psychological change, 
and can not be explained as yet even by spiritual laws known to us. 
A Buddhist may pass over to Christianity by the intellectual process, 
but he is not a Christian except in name. The spiritual process is 
independent, different, and unknown. 

Intellectual changes are vital, but as perilous as they are vital. 
As an intellectual view of Christianity is incomplete, so an intellectual 
regeneration, or change in religious sentiments, is incomplete and un- 
satisfying; and, without spiritual experience, Christianity will seem 
to him who accepts it on intellectual grounds only, as incompetent to 
fulfill its promises, and he turns against it. Honestly accepting it 
through an intellectual process, he has honestly abandoned it by a 
similar process. The intellectual root does not hold — he needs spirit- 
ual grappling-hooks. A sentimental religion or an intellectual ex- 
perience may be beautiful, but it is not life-imparting; it may be 
magnetic, but it is not powerful ; it is not a dynamical, but a me- 
chanical, religion. Christianity is life, not truth only. 



BIOGENESIS A CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 683 

The impartation of the vitalistic principle is one of the secrets of 
religion, and its enjoyment is one of the experiences of human his- 
tory. On the supposition that the soul is in a state of spiritual death, 
as the sacred writers represent, it is a mystery that by any process at 
all it can pass into a state of spiritual life. How can the non-living 
become living? It is a scientific as well as religious teaching, nei- 
ther science nor religion having answered it. Prof. Tyndall has urged 
that under the operation of the laws of crystallography all vegetable 
and animal life may be produced; but so bald a proposition has 
been overthrown by experiment. Crystals are not known to grow 
into vegetables or animals. So under no laws, physical or psycho- 
logical, thus far discovered, is it possible to explain the initial ap- 
pearance of religious life in man. To attribute it to an evolutionary 
process or natural development would please Herbert Spencer, but 
the religious life had a beginning, in which evolution played no part. 
The religious foundations are divine — not natural and evolutionary. 
Religious teachings, religious customs, and religious temples may re- 
sult from the domination of the religious idea ; but religious life is 
not evolved from the religious concept, or from any thing human. 
Religious life is the antecedent or normal condition of the soul, to be 
explained by no preliminary natural condition or force. It is prelim- 
inary ; it is first. Evolution never produces the first ; it may account 
for the second. It can not explain the beginning of the world, or of 
religion ; it may trace its development, but nothing more. 

Only two theories of spiritual life are possible — the theory of 
spontaneous regeneration and the theory of biogenesis, or the intro- 
duction of life from antecedent and external spiritual life. As the 
theory of spontaneous generation, as applied to physical things, has 
been abandoned and pronounced unscientific, so the theory of spon- 
taneous regeneration, or spiritual life springing out of spiritual death 
by the action of the latter, is repugnant on scientific as well as re- 
ligious grounds, and must be abandoned. Henry Drummond pro- 
nounces it an " impossible Gospel." Life from life is the only 
explanation of life. Spiritual life in man points to its antecedent 
in God. Regeneration is a biogenetic fact. Regeneration is a new 
generation, not a development of nature. As the lower order can 
not pass into the upper, the inorganic into the organic, unless the 
upper breathes into the lower, unless the organic toifches the inor- 
ganic, so the natural never becomes the spiritual unless the spiritual 
touches the natural, imparting its life to it, and assimilating it into 
its own likeness. This is the law of biogenesis — this is regeneration 
or the law of spiritual life. 

If, then, the religious life is not the evolution of a natural 



684 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

existing principle in man, it can not be the product of an evolutionary 
force without him. He did not catch the religious idea from his en- 
vironment, nor did he find it in the forces of nature. Neither in 
himself, nor in nature, does he discover it. The religious source is 
elsewhere ; the religious life is not derivative from a human or natural 
root, but is from outside and beyond the human and the natural. 

The mystery of spiritual change lies in the fact that it is not the 
result of voluntary mental action, but of the energy of a force quite 
independent of the mind or the individual. In intellectual changes man 
is active; in spiritual changes he is passive. In the one he works; in the 
other another works. 

As an objection to spiritual experience it is alleged that character 
is indestructible, and does not admit of change, and, therefore, the 
representation of change must be understood in an allegorical, and 
not in a literal, sense. The indestructibility of character is an ad- 
mitted fact, and regeneration not only respects it, but also aims both 
to conserve and perfect it. Regeneration is a transformation of in- 
destructible character, effected through the operation of the divine 
spirit without extiuguishing a single faculty or destroying a single 
function of the soul. The young man of Nain is dead ; Jesus Christ 
speaks the body back into life, not by destroying the body, but by 
imparting to it that which it had before death. Regeneration is a 
similar act with reference to the soul ; it is rebuilding what is in ruins ; 
it is repairing the damaged walls of the spiritual palace ; it is perfect- 
ing the imperfect. The blind eye is opened, a restoration to normal 
functions; diseased conditions are banished, and health is stamped upon 
the whole system. The work is beneficent, normal, healthful, re- 
demptive. 

The fact of an internal transformation of elemental character is 
fully taught in the Scriptures, and the instrument by which it is ef- 
fected is as clearly revealed, but the generic process of change is so 
hidden that it can not even be inferred. Nor is an. explanation need- 
ful either to faith or satisfaction. God reveals results, not processes. 
Botanical mysteries are as conspicuous as spiritual mysteries, and preg- 
nant with similar lessons. The revivification of nature after the Win- 
ter's cold has passed over it is a sublime spectacle, adumbrating a 
similar fact in the spiritual hemisphere, of which it is the truthful 
counterpart. Sun-heat and sun-light are poured into apparently life- 
less and denuded forests, which in brief time exhibit all the signs of 
life again, clothing themselves with their accustomed foliage, and min- 
istering to the earth as the earth has ministered to them. Even this 
familiar re-blooming the materialist must recognize without an adequate 
knowledge of the process that effected it. Likewise the divine influ- 



A KNOWLEDGE OF GOD SCRIP TU RALLY AFFIRMED. 685 

ence is poured into a spiritually lifeless soul, in which germinates a 
new life, whose peculiar manifestations are moral beauty, superhu- 
man strength, divine impulses, and gaspings after holiness. In the 
new condition the soul reaches after the divine nature as the 
divine nature reaches after it, and one merges into the other, so that, 
as Peter affirms, the soul partakes of the divine nature. The fact 
is patent, the process is unknown. 

This is not mysticism. The doctrine of spiritual experience has 
been misunderstood by the materialistic thinker as a reproduction of 
the mysticism of the Neo-Platonists, or the fanaticism of the school- 
men, with which neither intellectually nor religiously is it at all 
connected or related. The mystery of the spiritual process, and con- 
sequently the mystery of spiritual experience, is acknowledged ; but 
mystery is not mysticism, mystery is not fanaticism. Plotinus is not 
the best exponent of Christianity ; Thomas Aquinas is not the truest 
interpreter of the doctrine of experience. 

The secret of regeneration is the secret of the souL The soul is 
an unknown quantity, refusing to be interviewed to any great length; 
it will not turn " informer," and tell all it knows. God is even more 
inexplicable. The two come in sweet contact ; the Highest over- 
shadows the Lowest, and the latter is born into the former. A di- 
vine operation, this ; it is more than an intellectual throe ; it is the 
divine sweeping over the soul, like the eagle over its nest, and at last 
settling down upon it as its own, and warming it with its own life. 
The soul is the nest of God. 

To produce this change philosophy is utterly incompetent ; it may 
introduce and produce intellectual regeneration. Plato addresses the 
mind ; Paul reaches the heart. The one transforms the thinking ; the 
other transfigures the life. Great is intellectual purification ; greater 
is spiritual sanctification. 

The ground of these statements is, besides the experience itself, 
the teaching of the Scriptures, to which one must always turn for 
final truth respecting religion. Mr. Spencer declares God unknow- 
able and unthinkable, and religious experience, predicated on a 
knowledge of God, impossible. What saith the Scriptures? John 
says: "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and 
every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God." " He that 
believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself," says John 
also; and to the agnostic Jews Jesus said : "If any man will do his 
will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether 
I speak of myself." In these passages it is clearly evident that a 
knowledge of God, grounded in relationship to God, is affirmed as the 
substance of religious experience. The anticipations of Christianity 



PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

include a revelation of God to believing souls, and such a revelation 
as will constitute a fundamental experience. In harmony with these 
passages are others quite as explicit in their teaching, and significant 
of the same inference, but it is not necessary to quote them. No 
one will deny that the doctrine of experience is the doctrine of 
Christianity. 

Mr. Lewis teaches that "mathematics is an empirical science." 
Christianity is an empirical religion, justified and established as truly 
by experiment, observation, induction, and deduction as mathematics 
or any physical science. It is the religion of experience, and expe- 
rience is as authoritative as an axiomatic truth. Respecting the reli- 
ability of experience, Leibnitz says : "If our immediate internal ex- 
perience could possibly deceive us, there could no longer be for us 
any truth of fact ; nay, nor any truth of reason." Experience is the 
positive test of truth ; truth is not the test of experience. The stand- 
ard of philosophy is alleged truth ; the standard of Christianity is 
positive experience. The clash is between truth and experience. 
Philosophy precipitates a collision ; Christianity seeks a harmony. 
Truth must conform to experience, not experience to* truth. Truth 
is truth only as it is one with affirmative experience ; that is, all 
truth is empirical. The test of experience is supreme, final. With 
alleged truths materialism may make war ; in the presence of posi- 
tive experiences it is powerless, it is harmless. 

As the religion of truth and life Christianity is without a rival. 
As a religion of truth it opens doors hitherto closed to the unsandled 
feet of sages ; it reveals God as Plato never apprehended him ; it de- 
fines world-building as the materialist has never conceived it; it points 
back to the beginning, and its last rays carry one to the end and be- 
yond. A truth-religion it is. 

As a religion of life all men need it, for all are dead in trespasses 
and sin. Its words sound in every cavern of despair, and its flower 
of hope blooms over the door of every sepulcher. My words, says the 
Savior, "are spirit and life." 

Christianity is the real of the soul. 



A DIFFERENCE OF REALM. 687 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

COMMON GROUNDS OF" PHILOSOPHY AND 
CHRISTIANITY. 

THE conception of Heinrich Lang that the realm of religion is 
distinct from the realm of science is beautiful in outline, but as 
he regards the contents of the scientific realm as richer and vastly 
more important than the contents of the religious realm, and that 
they have nothing in common, one will wonder to what extent the 
conception of difference is true, and will desire to aualyze it before 
acceptiDg it. It is like saying that England and China, because dis- 
tinct as countries, are without mutual interests, and that the stronger 
may wage war against the latter at its option and for its own benefit. 

It is this conception of difference that has led to irreconcilable 
antagonism between the theologic and philosophic interpretations of 
truth in its physical, ethical, and religious aspects and relations. A 
survey of the field we have traversed shows two giants in hostile or 
strained relations, two movements of thought opposed in their meth- 
ods of research and discovery, and two investigating systems at 
variance on points of vital worth. That this is an unnatural atti- 
tude is self-evident; the strife is very like the " War of the Koses" 
in England or the war of the North and South in America ; it is 
the strife of truth with truth, brother with brother. 

Anciently, religion was a philosophical principle, and philosophy 
was a religious principle. Pantheism was as philosophical as it was 
religious, and as religious as it was philosophical. All the earlier relig- 
ions, save the Jewish, partook of a philosophical spirit, and, inquiring 
most profoundly into the nature of things, framed expositions, how- 
ever superstitious and erroneous, that for ages satisfied the intellectual 
life of the races who received them. Such religions, not fulfilling 
the idea of religion, immediately sought the aid of philosophy, but in 
their philosophical work they were as ineffectual as in their more ap- 
propriate religious work. Thus the blind led the blind, with the 
usual fatal result. 

The Judaic religion proposed from the first to stand on an inde- 
pendent basis, and taught truth, not by rationalistic processes, not in 
the form of speculation, not as an inquiry, but as exact truth, so far 
as the human mind, in the days of its authority, was able to appre- 
hend it. Never was the strait so great that any of its law-givers or 



688 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

prophets degenerated into philosophical discourse, but they always set 
forth Judaic truth as religious in content and purpose. To a still 
greater extent Christianity stood out as a bas-relief religion, with na- 
ture as its background, asserting religious truths for religious pur- 
poses, as though it had nothing else in view ; it avoided the circum- 
locutioDS of philosophy, the demonstrations of mathematics, and the 
licensed prodigality of poetic symbolization. Intended as a revelation, 
it took the shortest route to the truth, and made it known quickly. 

If credit must be given, it belongs to the Bible religions that 
they drew the line between religion and philosophy, assigning each a 
special sphere, bounded by walls that can not be broken down, and 
affirming the authority of each in its sphere. This was necessary, 
since the old religions united the two in unnatural bonds, and with- 
out benefit to either. It was a union of iron and clay, and had to be 
dissolved, the result being on the one hand an independent philos- 
ophy, and on the other an independent religion. Developing its 
genetic elements in their natural order, it is not strange that Chris- 
tianity appears as the exclusive religion of the supernatural, while 
philosophy, pursuing its independent course, arrays the natural against 
it. In the one miracles, Messiahship, faith, repentance, regeneration, 
ethical laws, prophecy, prayer, immortality, and resurrection challenge 
investigation, and are urged in opposition to the findings of philoso- 
phy ; in the other, pessimism, evolution, natural selection, atheism, 
mechanism, atomism, and all such are urged as the essentials of phi- 
losophy, without regard to the demands of religion. One concerns 
itself with things spiritual, ethical, immortal ; the other with things 
physical, psychological, sociological, and temporal. The dividing line 
is distinct. - 

Christianity meant that it should be drawn, though it seemed like 
the drawing of a sword to declare the division, but unintentionally 
hostility has been the result. It meant that truth should be appre- 
hended from the double stand-point; that at first the natural should 
be interpreted by natural methods, and the supernatural by supernat- 
ural methods ; that afterward the natural should be interpreted by 
the supernatural, and the supernatural by the natural, to the end that 
it would appear that all things are one, and God is over all. The 
program of Christianity is broad and comprehensive, looking to unity 
through methods diverse and even antagonistic, purposing to provoke 
harmony between the ego and the non-ego, and allowing to philoso- 
phy the widest range of thought, yet going beyond it in its province 
of revelation. This purpose, misunderstood or not discerned at all, 
has been made responsible for the actual variance between the two 
systems of thought, and many like Lang divide them inseparably. 



INDICATIONS OF A TRUCE. 689 

His conception of difference is the real cause of hostility ; the Bible's 
conception of difference is the basis of final unity and harmony. 

The more specific alienation has occurred within the last fifty 
years, during which science has made prodigious progress in its proper 
field of discovery, being emboldened, as it explained some things m 
a new yet hypothetical way, to declare that it could explain all things 
in a similar way, or at least differently from religion. Its apparent 
preliminary successes deepened its unintended prejudice toward religious 
truth and the religious method. In advance it announced the down- 
fall of religion ; not that it had grounds for the announcement, but, 
in a self-confident, partisan spirit, it was ready to believe that it could 
undermine the solid truths of religion as easily as a few workmen 
had pared down the rocky cliffs of England's coast. Upon the task, 
so serious, and so herculean as well, it entered, demolishing some 
presuppositions of theology, compelling a restatement of some beliefs, 
and a remodeling of some definitions, and, in a way, threatened the 
bulwarks of Christianity. Under the circumstances, the fears of the 
ignorant were aroused ; the attention of Christian thinkers was se- 
cured ; original inquiries were re-asked ; and a battle, without the 
spirit of compromise on either side, began, which has raged with an 
arbitrariness that promised an endless contest. 

The conflict continues, but indications of a truce are visible, and 
the preliminaries of an agreement have been discussed. There are 
leaders on both sides, who, recognizing the suicidal result of the 
struggle, are quite willing to concede some things heretofore regarded 
as fundamental, but now ascertained to be incidental, and who be- 
lieve that, however necessary the conflict in itself, the important ends 
aimed at have already been secured. So soon as a willingness to 
consult upon the situation is manifest, there is hope of reconciliation ; 
but it is no easy task to bring together in amicable relations two such 
colossal belligerents ; but he renders service to both sides who, instead 
of inflaming the relations, contributes by wise words to a peaceful 
settlement of the matters at issue. Peace is absolutely necessary to 
both. The "peace relation," as Rudolf Schmid calls it, is the condi- 
tion of further truth-development. 

In suggesting the possibility of reconciliation between philosophy 
and Christianity, we do not mean that either side shall compromise 
itself by unfounded concessions to the other, or by any experience of 
self-stultification, or by an abandonment of any essential principle, 
discovery, or truth, for such compromise is not at all necessary. 
Whatever truth the one may have discovered, it will be of benefit to 
the other to know it. Instead of compromise of truths, let there be 
unyielding independence. Nor is it necessary to harmonious relations 

44 



690 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

that the two abandon their distinctive peculiarities, forming an en- 
tirely different system out of materials common to both, for philos- 
ophy is functional in the natural sphere, and Christianity is functional 
in the spiritual sphere. Any suggestion that proposes to weaken 
either, or compromise their character, or alter their functions, or blot 
them out as integral systems, can not be the basis of an enduring 
reconciliation, or even of temporary mutual sympathy. Nor is the 
proposed reconciliation to grow out of a mere correction of mutual 
misunderstandings, for these give way on other grounds ; but the 
basis of harmony lies deeper, rather in an understanding of fundamentals 
than in an overthrow of misconceptions and superstitions. No one is 
prepared to say that either science or religion is overthrown; no one 
can rationally believe that either will be overthrown ; and no one re- 
ligiously desires the overthrow of either. To secure friendly recogni- 
tion of the inner merits of each ; to allow both as wide a sphere as 
they can occupy ; and, at the same time, to unite them in a common 
pursuit, or to make one tributary to the other in the carrying on of 
its special work, is a result devoutly desired by many on both sides. 
What basis of mediation is, therefore, possible? The short answer 
is, not a basis of disagreements, which must forever keep them apart, 
but a basis of agreements or common possessions. The secret of 
Paul's missionary triumphs was his observance of this general rule — 
as, at Athens, in order to win the pagan mind to a consideration of 
the truths of Christianity, he pointed to the agreement of certain 
pagan teachings with these fundamental truths, and did not assail 
their errors. He avoided arraying the religions against each other, 
but insisted with tremendous force upon their agreements, capturing 
their assent if it did not result in their conversion. The " unknown 
God" of Athens is the known God of Christianity, said the apostle, 
and they listened without prejudice. So elsewhere he did not widen 
the breach between Judaism and Christianity by contrasts and ex- 
posure of disagreements, but referred to truths common to both, and 
attempted thus to unite them. Even when he must speak of symbols 
or ceremonies that had passed away, he was careful to point out their 
fulfillment in Christian usages and teachings, showing their preserva- 
tion in a transposed form and in new relations in the new religion. 
In this manner, philosophy and Christianity may be harmonized, or 
the differences between them overshadowed by the larger agreements; 
not entirely harmonized, we confess, for there are some differences 
that are essential and must remain ; but the agreements are so many 
that, if emphasized, held up to the gaze of both sides, the result will 
be, a higher mutual appreciation, and a shortening of the distance 
between them. 



HALL UCINA TIONS OF SCIENCE. 691 

The first agreement we propose relates, not to the contents of 
either religion or philosophy, but to a willingness on both sides that 
such contents may be investigated, tested, proved. The scientist may 
smile at this basis, since he may fancy that the trouble all along has 
grown out of the alleged refusal of religious truth, having clothed 
itself in mystery, to undergo critical inspection, while scientific truth 
has been open-hearted and always ready for examination. It is at 
this point we must pause. The claim of science that its truths are 
self-transparent is a trifle delusive, and the charge against religion is 
not exactly in accordance with the facts. Not a little parade has 
been made over certain discoveries in the scientific field, but it is not 
certain that science has desired a close investigation of its discoveries. 
It has really forbidden a re-examination by the boldness of its an- 
nouncements, ridiculing a want of faith in them, and imposing 
acceptance of them by its ipse dixit. There AA^as a time when it was 
imprudent, a sign of ignorance, to question any of the supposed facts 
of science, and to revolt against any of its deductions was revolution 
against knowledge. In this way science repressed, not investigation 
generally, but investigation of its own doings, which prepared it for 
crime against the truth, and which it frequently committed. In this 
independent mood, it announced facts that later investigation has de- 
stroyed ; it framed systems that mature reflection has overthrown ; it 
inaugurated sciences that recent facts have canceled. Early geology 
with its eighty anti-Biblical theories was a false science. Hackel's 
twenty-two animalic stages preceding the appearance of man, Darwin- 
ism in its prostituted forms, natural selection, the nebular hypothesis, 
an immense antiquity for man, and such theories, were supposed to 
rest upon inviolable facts, but they were the presuppositions of science, 
without value except as presuppositions. The hallucination of science 
was seen in its purpose to put these forward as discovered facts or 
truths, which the Christian thinker resisted. He demanded that 
science, as to its methods and results, should be investigated ; that it 
should be responsible to truth for its deliverances ; and that, until its 
reputation for veracity should be established, it should be without the 
ipse dixit in the realm of nature. 

This put a check on high-handed burglary of facts, on scientific 
iconoclasm of religious truth. Darwinism has been investigated, and 
" natural selection" is exceedingly modest, even as a theory; evolu- 
tion contracts with new data, and is on trial for its life ; the distance 
from the organic to the inorganic has never been shortened ; the pre- 
historic man, back of sixty centuries ago, has not been found ; the 
mechanical view of the universe requires a theistic undergirding to be 
at all tenable ; and finally science has taken off its shoes, for it has 



692 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

learned that the universe is holy ground. In compelling science to 
submit to investigation, many errors have been corrected or are in 
process of correction, many facts appear in their true proportion, the- 
ories pass at their true value, and rarely is any scientific statement 
fully accepted without the accompanying demonstration. The gain to 
truth, to religion, to science itself, has been incalculable. 

On the other hand, Christianity, at first guarding its sacred truths 
from profane touch, has at last submitted them all to critical, histor- 
ical, scientific, and philosophical tests, which has resulted in great 
gain to itself, and demonstrated the intimate relation of natural and 
supernatural truth. In honest guardianship of religious truth, the 
early Christian thinker construed all outside attempts at investigation 
of it as irreverent in spirit and infidelic in purpose, and felt justified 
in rebuking it. The thought of applying natural tests to supernatural 
things was, in his judgment, a proof of a depraved impulse, which 
should be suppressed, and he suppressed it. 

Further objection to a rigid scientific examination of religious 
truth was made on the ground that the method of examination ap- 
peared to be incongruous, and, therefore, the result could not be 
exact or reliable. As well attempt to test the law of chemical affinity 
by the hydraulic ram as to test supernatural truth by a natural prin- 
ciple ; so thought the pietistic believer. If Christianity, as a religion, 
is to be investigated, it should be investigated, not by a philosophic 
or scientific method, but by a religious method. Matter is the test 
of matter ; mind the test of mind ; science the proof of science ; re- 
ligion the proof of religion, — thus reasoned the religionist. From the 
objection of Christian thought to the supposed unnatural method of 
investigation, the conclusion was drawn that there must be something 
in Christianity that can not bear investigation ; hence, a reaction 
against Christianity was the result. 

In the refusal of the pietist to open the doors of the temple of 
truth to the world, he placed religion on the defensive ; he seemed to 
shield it at a time when it ought to be known ; he guarded mysteries 
that needed no protection ; and in objecting to the scientific method 
he objected to the only method the profane mind can or will apply 
to truth. This was not merely a breach of propriety, but the position 
was false ; false scientifically, false religiously. To the philosophical 
mind, the scientific method is the only method ; he knows nothing of 
the supernatural method, and should not be asked to bow to it. The 
chief objection that philosophy proposes to the religious system is the 
method it requires for its examination ; and, on the other side, the 
chief objection that religion proposes to philosophy is the method it 
has adopted for the discovery of truth. Philosophy says to religion, 



THE TWO BIBLICAL METHODS. 693 

your method is false ; religion retorts, your method is not sound. Re- 
duced to final terms, it is a conflict over method, arising from a misun- 
derstanding of the functions, claims, and agencies of the contestants. 

Evidently, Christianity may propose its method of expression and 
its method of vindication. It has done both, and on examination it will 
be found that it is friendly to any or all methods, natural or supernat- 
ural, which guarantee the discovery of truth. Peter exhorts the Chris- 
tian to be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in him ; this is the 
rationalistic or philosophical method. Under certain conditions, the 
Master said, the disciple might know whether the doctrine he taught 
is divine or not ; this -is the supernaturalistic or experimental method. 
The indorsement of both methods by the Gospel should end the con- 
flict and lead to the highest truth. 

To what extent the two methods may be applied to Biblical truth 
must be determined in part by the specific character of the truth 
itself, and its relation to the entire system. It will be going too far 
to assure the scientific investigator that he will be able to demonstrate 
the integrity of every spiritual truth by the scientific method, but he 
may apply the method so often as to persuade himself of the truth of 
Christianity as a whole. To the historical data of the Biblical docu- 
ments he may apply the rules of historical criticism ; to the scientific 
hints therein found he may apply scientific proofs ; to the poetical 
products of inspiration he may apply the laws of prosody ; for the 
verbal frame-work of the documents the laws of language may be 
consulted ; and for the general structure of the volume of Truth the 
usual analytic and synthetic rules may be employed. 

Possibly this is all that philosophy can fairly undertake or succeed 
in accomplishing, for the mysteries of the spiritual side of Christian- 
ity can neither be explored or explained by any of the above rules 
or principles. Incarnation, regeneration, atonement, miracle, prophecy, 
immortality, and resurrection are beyond these scientific rules ; but 
if there are any other rules by which even these truths may be ana- 
lyzed, no objection should interpose. All that is required is the rule. 
Investigate to the remotest bounds of the truth-area, but the rule of 
investigation must first be known. There should be no ecclesiastical 
barrier to the scientific pursuit of mystery ; hunt it down, expose its 
content, tell its hidden life, and reveal its hidden glory ; and if any 
barrier at last is found, it will arise from the truth itself. An open 
door to science; an open door to religion: this shall be the common law. 
On this basis there can be progress. 

The corollary from this general position is that philosophy must 
recognize the appropriate sphere of religion, and religion must recog- 
nize the appropriate sphere of philosophy. Philosophy is a hemi- 



694 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

sphere ; Christianity is, under certain qualifications, a hemisphere 
also ; it requires both to make the globe. Hitherto philosophy ranged 
throughout the universe of being and becoming, intrenching at times 
on the particular domain of religious truth v If, however, there are, 
limits to religious thought, there are limits to philosophical thought 
also. Granted that the physical realm, with all the problems it can 
suggest, belongs to the philosopher, it must be granted that the spir- 
itual realm, with all the problems it can suggest, belongs to the 
Christian thinker. If the spheres are distinct, they must be recog- 
nized, and the laborers confined to one or the other ; and limited to 
the laws and methods appropriate to the sphere. With such recog- 
nition collision will be avoided and peace will be assured. 

In military phrase, these, however, are only the preliminary con- 
ditions of a truce ; they are not the basis of an enduring friendship. 
Philosophy and Christianity, mutually repugnant on the ground of 
difference, may be drawn together in defense of common interests, 
and mutually support each other in the presence of a common danger ; 
that is, mediation is possible on the basis of agreements. One who looks 
over the field of conflict can not fail to see that, distinct as the 
belligerents are, occupying separate spheres as they do, and pursuing 
certain definite aims peculiar to their spheres, they have common in- 
terests, and are so related to fundamental truths that they can not 
afford to be divided. There are errors, theories, and misbeliefs to 
which philosophy is as constitutionally opposed as Christianity, and 
both are striving to circumvent, curtail, and extinguish them. In this 
category we include that latest form of intellectual mischief-making 
known as agnosticism, or the apologetic system of ignorance now of- 
fered as a substitute for all philosophical speculation. In its content 
it is old Pyrrhonism reproduced, implying now, as anciently, a denial 
of knowledge and of the possibility of knowledge. It does not deny 
truth, but affirms that we know nothing about it. Man is a know- 
nothing from necessity, by virtue of the limitation of his faculties, 
and must forever dwell in darkness. His intellectual aspirations are 
the mockeries of his nature. Blindness, uncertainty, the fatalism of 
ignorance, must paralyze all his attempts at inquiry. The hope of 
emancipation from such a thralldom is delusive, or at the most senti- 
mental ; emancipation can not be realized. The agnostic is the apos- 
tle of midnight. 

Now, it is important to consider the relation of philosophy to 
agnosticism, especially to inquire if its tendency is to this extreme 
form of unbelief, or if it is not essentially and radically opposed to it. 
In determining this relation we meet with embarrassment in the fact 
that some philosophers are agnostics, and philosophy itself has veered 



ALLIANCE OF PHILOSOPHY WITH AGNOSTICISM. 695 

toward a general agnosticism. When it is recalled that philosophy- 
has denied the possibility of knowing God, since he is indiscernible, 
and that he is unthinkable, since he is entirely beyond the condi- 
tioned ; that anthropomorphic conceptions of the supernatural are not 
tolerated in some philosophic circles, and therefore the supernatural is 
banished from thoughtful inquiry ; that the essence of being confess- 
edly eludes all successful searching; that matter still refuses to dis- 
close all its secrets ; that man is self-ignorant, and hopelessly so ; and 
that some of the great questions of history are still unsettled, it is 
easy to believe that philosophy has been coquetting with agnosticism. 
Verily, it is only another instance of Saul seeking the witch of Endor 
for information, the result being the report of things not pleasant 
to hear. 

The alliance of philosophy with agnosticism is proof of degeneracy, 
but it can not last long ; it is an illegitimate alliance, and will dis- 
solve of its own accord. For a true philosophy is based on the oppo- 
site platform, having for its purpose the elimination of the unknown, 
or, what is the same thing, the solution of all mj-steries and the reign 
of all knowledge. Hence its penetrating spirit, its inquisitorial en- 
ergy ; hence its goal must be universal knowledge, not universal 
ignorance. It proposes to lay bare all truth, to illuminate all dark- 
ness, to conduct mankind out of Plato's cave, to gild every peak with 
sunlight, and to dissolve the nebulae of history into related events and 
a systematic order of development. It proposes to knock at the door 
of nature until it shall be opened, and to seek her gems until they 
shall be found. It proposes to look up into the face of the Infinite 
Intelligence, and inquire with immortal calmness concerning the origin 
and substance of being, and its relation to non-being. Its purpose is 
as broad as "being" and " becoming," which includes all things. • 

This is not the goal of agnosticism. The two are irreconcilably 
opposed ; there is no common ground where they may meet ; there 
is no bond of union between them. Already the different directions 
they are taking are apparent in the different results they are an- 
nouncing. 

Philosophy is on the track of truth, scenting the highest laws, 
gathering the most resourceful facts, and widening the sphere of 
knowledge, to be sure in a crude way, and often adopting palpable 
errors and injectable conclusions, but constantly adding to the sum 
of the world's knowledge, and ministering to the intellectual wants 
of the race. Agnosticism is a contracting, enervating spirit; its pulse 
is slow, its step tardy, its walk backwards. There is no elasticity in 
it. It beats a funeral march in our ears. 

In proportion as philosophy and agnosticism are essentially op- 



696 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

posed, philosophy and Christianity are essentially agreed touching the 
limits of human knowledge and the province of human thought, 
Christianity is the revelation of man's right to the domain of knowl- 
edge, going so far in that direction as to aid him by supernatural 
fore-glimpses of those truths he can not discover by the scientific pro- 
cess, and so laying at his feet those facts, laws, systems, and princi- 
ples necessary to his happiness and advancement. It is not the re- 
ligion of ignorance, but prima facie a revelation, and therefore the 
source of knowledge. It adds to its value also that it purports to be 
a revelation of those truths of which the agnostic confesses he knows 
nothing, and can learn nothing from any source open to him, and in 
which the philosopher is most profoundly concerned. The existence 
of God, the reign of providence, the origin of the worlds, the char- 
acter of man, and the destiny of all things, while enigmatical sub- 
jects to the agnostic, are the common truths of revelation, the exposi- 
tion of which belongs equally to the sphere of philosophy. At this 
vital truth-point agnosticism separates from Christianity and philos- 
ophy, and philosophy and Christianity unite. Agnosticism is the foe 
of both — of philosophy as a truth-hunter, of Christianity as a truth- 
revealer. Forgetting their differences in the broader purpose to de- 
fend common interests, and agreeing that truth must be protected at 
all hazards ; the two, though differently equipped for the task, will 
seek to serve the same end, and share the glory of a common 
victory. A cold observer may pronounce this the selfish basis of 
union — a union prompted by the instinct of self-preservation ; a union 
without an inner bond; but a formal union, perhaps, is the pre-con- 
dition of absolute organic union, and at all events the pre-condition 
of a suspension of hostilities. Both are in danger from a common 
foe, both must provide for the common defense. 

< The idea of common defense is relieved of its selfislj character by 
the identity of many of their truths, a number of which are as vital 
to the existence of one as to the other. Take that refined form of 
philosophic speculation known as idealism, which in its functional re- 
lations is closely allied to certain Biblical truths, and can not be 
easily separated from them. Interpreting matter as non-existent, the 
result is contempt for nature ; but, while Christianity emphasizes its 
reality, it equally emphasizes its perishability, and ever strives to 
wean human affection from it. The result is the same in both cases — 
contempt Philosophy goes off into hyperbole, but the hyperbolic is 
the shadow of the truth of religion. The one raises the question if 
matter exists ; the other treats it as existing ; but both lift being 
above it, and are substantially at one at this point. It should not be 
forgotten that the materialists, pricking hyperbole to its center, are 



OTHER POINTS OF CONTACT. 697 

exalting matter to a high position of responsibility, even endowing 
it with the power of procreation, and with the potency of all life. It 
looks as if the deification of matter will be proposed as the opposite 
pole of idealism. To this exaltation of matter, or raising gods out 
of the dust, Christianity will unite with idealism in protesting, and 
will raise up barriers against the surging tides of materialism. 

Nor is this the only point of contact between them. Respecting 
natural evil, or the evil environment of man, the two are not suffi- 
ciently far apart to provoke remark. Tribulation, affliction, disease, 
and death, the idealist looks upon as the conditions of moral devel- 
opment ; Emerson interprets moral evil in this way ; and Christianity 
is not in disagreement with the interpretation. Without using the 
word "probation," idealism interprets life as a probation, attaching 
moral significance to every trial, and relieving moral friction of its 
edge by assigning it a disciplinary function. To both, therefore, 
pessimism is unknown. Both interpret alike, leaving the religion of 
melancholy to Schopenhauer and his followers, The spirit of ideal- 
ism is the spirit of Christianity. The latter is ideal in its inmost 
function and character; it is spiritual, supra-sensible, holding the ma- 
terial at arm's length, and centering all in God. If the former has not 
gone up to such heights, it is looking in that direction ; they can not 
fall out by the way ; they are friends. 

The theistic notion, or the problem of the Unconditioned, is the 
enigma of metaphysics, and the summit-truth of inspired revelation. 
Agreement touching this greatest truth must result in the extinction 
of disagreement touching all lower or subsidiary truth. Interpreta- 
tions of natural phenomena, containing the germs of atheism, have 
been framed by the Hackel school of investigators, but the majority 
of philosophic thinkers prefer to be in harmony with the theistic hy- 
pothesis, and express dissatisfaction with their proposed expulsion from 
the ranks of believers. Philosophy must break with atheism or mon^ 
otheism ; it can not serve both, nor can it be indifferent to either. 
It leans to the monotheistic idea even when confessing that it is un- 
explainable and unthinkable. 

More than once Mr. Darwin grieved that his theory was construed 
into a support of atheism, for in the early stages of his career he had not 
lost faith in the existence of a personal God. In his " Origin of Species" 
he affirms that the views therein expressed should not "shock the relig- 
ious feelings," as the development idea is in perfect harmony with the 
theistic hypothesis. As to "natural selection," K. E. von Baer con- 
demns it is as "scientifically indefensible, but not anti-religious." 
Oskar Peschel vindicates Darwinism from anti-religious tendencies, 
holding that creation by development is nobler than creation as an 



698 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

instantaneous product by catastrophic power. Among the living 
thinkers may be mentioned Herbert Spencer, who insists that, so far 
as his evolutional teachings have any theological bearing or value, he 
has been misunderstood, for he spurns all atheistic sentiment. He 
holds to the existence of an absolute Intelligence, without personality 
in the anthropomorphic sense, but as a conscious, self-governed, eter- 
nal power, to whom the universe is responsible. He further conceives 
of the divine Intelligence without conditional relations, and so com- 
pletely infinite in all functions as to eclipse any finite conception, so 
that it is impossible that man should know any thing of him beyond 
the mere fact of his existence. The Christian thinker just here dis- 
covers the need of a revelation from God to supplement human 
knowledge, and points to the Bible as such revelation ; but Spencer 
holds that the revelation compromises itself by its anthropomorphic 
conceptions, which is an objection to finite conceptions altogether, for 
all thought is necessarily and vitally anthropomorphic. Truth is vis- 
ible only to anthropomorphic eyes, and a revelation of God not an- 
thropomorphic would be unintelligible. The position of Spencer is 
that of the Athenians, who believed in God without knowing any thing 
about him. If the so-called revelation of the Infinite is valuable at 
all, it is valuable as an accommodation to finite thought, but must 
not be taken as an actual representation, or as containing a positive 
enumeration of the qualities of the Infinite. He is too great to be 
known ; he is not small enough to be even apprehended. With the 
theory of the divine greatness we are in entire sympathy, it being but 
an echo of the Biblical truth that he is "past finding out/' he is " un- 
searchable," he is eternal, all-wise, immortal, and invisible. Spencer's 
supreme exaltation of the Infinite is not equal to the lofty revelation 
of the eternal throne and its holy occupant. Spencer is not the peer 
of Isaiah, or of Habbakuk, or of Job, or John. He says nothing 
that they have not forestalled and did not originate. He says nothing 
new when he writes: "If religion and science are to be reconciled, 
the basis of reconciliation must be this deepest, widest, and most cer- 
tain of all facts — that the Power which the universe manifests to us 
is utterly inscrutable." To this the Christian thinker assents, not 
because Spencer demands it, but because it is true. Sir Wm. Ham- 
ilton and Mansel likewise assert the same thing, going farther, how- 
ever, than Spencer in requiring faith in the Infinite. 

Whatever opinion one holds of Spencer's basis of reconciliation, 
one will not condemn it as intentionally atheistic, but will concede 
that it is reverent and perhaps useful. The weakness of the Spen- 
cerian theology is that it embraces too much or not enough as truth, 
and it is either too high or too low, as a working hypothesis for the 



ERROR IN METAPHYSICAL ROBES. 699 

unearthing of truth. It embraces too much in that it assumes to ex- 
plain all things, being and non-being, from the single point of incom- 
prehensibility, when it is utterly impossible to explain any thing 
from that stand-point ; it embraces too little in that it assumes that 
its representation of the Absolute is exhaustive, when it is not more 
than inceptional ; it is too high, as a working hypothesis — for no one 
can walk far on stilts — its view of God is entirely out of the anthropo- 
morphic range ; it is too low, for, abandoning the high level of inves- 
tigation, it prostrates the worker in the dust, requiring at his hands 
a mechanical explanation of the universe. Spencer's theology is a 
perversion of the truth, or an error dressed in metaphysical robes. 

The descent from evolution to rank materialism is rapid and pre- 
cipitate, but the materialist may be as honest in his desire for the 
truth as the evolutionist, and may have rendered not a little service 
to the religion he is anxious to overthrow. He is not shy of atheism, 
since he does not apprehend the necessity of the divine presence in 
the development of the world, and since nature is the only Teacher 
he feels bound to respect. The work of the materialist is not irra- 
rational — it is his deduction that contradicts faith. The facts he fur- 
nishes are such as Christianity can appropriate in its own behalf, 
although he has not the remotest intention that it shall be bolstered 
by any thing he seeks or finds. It will surprise him, doubtless, to 
learn that he has not, as yet, shaken a single stone in the temple of 
truth, and when he becomes fully aware that his iconoclasm has been 
absolutely harmless, he may see things in their right relations, and 
subscribe to that which he can not subvert. The origin of matter, 
or the old problem of the genesis of the universe, is his hobby, which 
he rides in all kinds of weather and in all the fields of literature and 
human thought. To the facts he discovers we have not the slightest 
objection; indeed, on the basis of ascertained facts we propose recon- 
ciliation between Christianity and philosophic materialism. As to 
world-building, whenever it is proved that "fire-mist," or "star-stuff," 
or atoms, were original sources, or the beginnings of the universe, we 
shall accept them without the slightest fear to Christianity; but pre- 
sumptions must not be presented as proofs. On presumption alone 
reconciliation is out of the question, since the science of the future 
may overturn it, and presume some other origin. Let the origin be 
established ; let materialism establish it, and Christianity will not 
contradict it. This is not a concession to materialism, but the proof 
of the broad-gauge character of revealed religion, which is broad 
enough to concede that creative power might have exercised itself in 
a thousand ways, whether atomically, protoplastically, germinally, or 
otherwise. Eeconciliation is possible on broad-gauge truth. 



700 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

We must keep in mind all the time that Christianity locates the 
creative influence, whether it acted instantaneously, once for all, or 
gradually, consuming millions of years in the development of its de- 
signs, in a personal God ; while philosophy, somewhat estranged from 
the theistic hypothesis, is disposed to confine itself to an examination 
of the modalities of creation, or the plan of the universe. We frankly 
confess that it is immaterial to the defense of Christianity what 
method of creation philosophy may finally approve, as any method, 
plan, or order, or even a methodless method, can scarcely be detrimental 
to the theistic idea, or the reign of God in the universe. If Chris- 
tianity goes to philosophy for the modality of creation, philosophy 
must come to Christianity for a knowledge of the creative force — the 
Creator. To recognize the specific work of each system is to lay the 
foundation for an organic union of the systems, which is fast ap- 
proaching. 

As regards the antiquity of the worlds, evolutionists and theolo- 
gians have differed not a little, the latter holding to a limited 
antiquity, the former to a practically endless one. In the advocacy 
of their interpretations the theologians were all too stubborn and 
without supporting facts, which they had to acknowledge in the final 
determination of the question. Science has pronounced against a short 
antiquity. The Bible leaves it an open question, to be ascertained 
in a scientific way, for its great assertion — "In the beginning, God 
created" — will allow the removal of the creative period back even 
too far for the searching gaze of scientific inquiry. Now, it is of no 
moment whether the materialist puts the "beginning" back so far 
that the figures pass beyond finite comprehension or computation, 
or brings it forward so that it almost grazes the historic period ; it is 
immaterial whether the earth was created twenty millions of years 
ago or only one hundred thousand years ago ; Christianity can accept 
any scientific interpretation of the "beginning." It is a curious 
commentary, however, on scientific vacillation that, having an- 
nounced various antiquities for the universe, stretching out into the 
numerical infinities, it has recently reduced the age of the earth to 
the brief period of three million years! We accept this reduction 
with a sense of relief, but with the understanding that should the 
figures be changed hereafter, either increasing or still further reducing 
the antiquity, the "age" will be in perfect harmony with Moses. On 
the pledge not to disturb the " figures" of philosophy the two systems 
certainly can agree to suspend hostilities; we go further, and say 
that even fraternal relations may be established between them. 

If the friendship thus suggested appear a trifle cold and distant, 
or not more than formal, the two systems will throw off all social 



OPPOSITE INFERENCES FROM THE SAME FACTS, 701 

reserve and rejoice together on another ground, namely, on the doc- 
trine of the unity of nature. On the hypothesis of a world-unity 
Christianity enforces its doctrine of monotheism ; the unity of the 
universe is proof of the unity of God. Nature manifests the pres- 
ence of a single mind, the evolution of a single plan, and the reign 
of a single will or power. Theology approvingly quotes this unity. 
Does science contradict it? Before modern materialism lifted its 
sepulchral voice against Christian theism, scientific thought was unani- 
mous in the declaration that nature is a panorama of unity. Hum- 
boldt avowed it with convincing proofs, and regarded it as the key to 
scientific generalization. The German materialists, especially Hackel 
and Biichner, proclaim it, founding upon it the religion of nature, as 
the substitute for the religion of revelation. Christianity suggests 
monotheism; materialism adopts monism. What is the difference? 
Both are intensely perceptive of that spirit of unity that pervades 
the universe, recognizing but one order of development in its history, 
and the single law of continuity in its progress. They are brothers 
in defense of the great family truth. They can not divide on this 
ground ; but the inferences they draw are different, repugnant, an- 
tagonistic. Again and again has the proof appeared that the conflict 
between the opposing systems is the conflict of inference. Honest in- 
vestigation is securing an agreement touching the facts ; but to infer 
correctly from the facts involves reason, intelligence, skill, and a 
devout purpose. St. George Mivart agreed with Darwin as to facts ; 
he differed with him as to the inferences. The inference-maker 
speculates, reasons, turns prejudice into an argument, foresees con- 
clusions before they logically appear, and at last tortures facts out 
of complexion, character, and relation, to justify the result he pre- 
fers. Often facts are made to do the bidding of the inference-maker 
when he should in homage submit to the decree of fact. 

An instance of perversion of fact in support of inference is at 
hand. Christianity, detecting the physical unity of the universe, 
rises to the conception of one God, as the logical teaching of the 
fact; materialism, honoring the fact by recognizing its existence, dis- 
honors it by attributing to the universe a self-producing and self- 
sustaining power; it does not rise out of the fact itself to any 
thing beyond. The fact is the all in all. Strauss says: " We de- 
mand the same piety for our cosmos that the devout of old demanded 
for his God." No greater homage shall be paid to the personal God 
than to the cosmic God. Christianity runs on the track of facts to 
personality ; materialism on the same track to cosmical character. 
The facts are the same — the inferences are opposite poles. On the 
common ground of unity both may stand ; on facts, laws, and princi- 



702 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

pies, they harmonize ; the agreement of inference must be left to 
time. They are the husbandmen of the same fields, and are equally 
interested in the products of those fields ; and, diverse as are their 
methods of plowing them, they reap the same ground-facts, upon 
which they will finally pronounce the same value. 

A closer agreement is still possible, even on the basis of funda- 
mental truth. "The fundamental truth of all philosophy," says 
Herbert Spencer, "is the persistence of force." Modern science 
means by this doctrine that the total quantity of energy in the uni- 
verse, however employed, and however manifested, neither increases 
nor diminishes, but remains the same forever. Spencer declares this 
to be fundamental to philosophy. Though not fundamental to re- 
ligion, religion has no reason for suspecting its unsoundness, and will 
grant it a place among the dogmas of science, so soon as science itself 
demonstrates it to be a verity. When Spencer said reconciliation be- 
tween religion and science is possible on the basis of the inscrutabil- 
ity of the supreme power, religion accepted it ; and now, when he 
says persistence of force is fundamental to philosophy, religion accepts 
the truth, as not at all dangerous to itself, or harmful to any projects 
it has in view. As yet we have not asked philosophy to accept what 
is fundamental to religion, but in the best of temper religion accepts 
what is fundamental to philosophy. 

Equally safe footing is found for both antagonists in a common 
view of man, a subject that has hitherto divided them beyond all 
supposable hope of reconciliation. Time and again theories of de- 
scent, laws of heredity, and morphological ideas of the race have 
been declared and so supported by facts, as absolutely and entirely 
to render incredible the Scriptural account of man. He is a de- 
scendant of the animal kingdom ; he is the product of evolutionary 
forces ; his ancestry were gibbons, chimpanzees, and gorillas. If the 
philosopher insists on this ancestral history of man, the Christian 
thinker must bid him adieu, for it is not fundamental to anthropol- 
ogy. In the extemporaneous period of the evolution theory some 
unique statements — the temporary hallucinations of enthusiastic sci- 
entists — were undoubtedly made ; but the sober, thoughtful, scientific 
evolution of to-day is reconsidering the grounds of its faith, and 
recasting the terms of its theory, and at all events it is not as demon- 
strative as it was in the beginning. 

It is a significant fact that the Pentateuch furnishes in immediate 
succession two apparently contradictory accounts of the appearance of 
man, the first assigning him the last place, and the second the first 
place, in the creative series. Over this historic dilemma the evolu- 
tionists have perplexed themselves not a little, regarding it as an 



AGREEMENT ON FACTS. 703 

inner contradiction, irreconcilable on any hypothesis whatever. 
The accounts, however, as we have heretofore seen, are one, related 
in inverse order for a special purpose. In the first account the regular 
scientific order of creation is given, man being reserved to the last, not 
because he was the masterpiece, but because the earth was not in 
scientific readiness for him ; while in the second account he is placed 
at the head, not because he was first, but because he was best It is as 
if one writing the history of the Christian Church should begin with 
apostolic times and carry it down to the present day, or beginning now 
should write backward to the apostles ; the history would be the same. 
The fact of man's creation is not disturbed by the order of the account. 

This, however, is the dividing line between theology and evolu- 
tion. The evolutionist magnifies the order of the creation ; the theologian 
magnifies the fact of creation ; the one dwells on the system or method of 
the creative work, the other on its results. Both may be justified in 
their positions, but it must be clear that the facts themselves take 
precedence of the order of facts ; that is, it is proper first to consider 
what the facts are, and then to establish the order of their succession. 
Theology precedes evolution. In one account in Genesis man's rela- 
tionship to »the world is announced ; in the other his independence 
of the world is as clearly set forth. As the last in the series, he is in 
the line of animalic succession ; as the first, he begins a line, not of 
animals, but of rational intelligences. As he is the end of one so he 
is the beginning of another line. 

The evolutionist, appropriating the first account, heralds the idea 
of descent, which is a phase of truth ; but, ignoring the second ac- 
count, he is ignorant of the true character of man, and reminds us 
of the eagle with one wing, or a boat with a single oar. 

The double account, favorable to evolutionist and theologian, may 
be accepted as common ground, or as the basis of a general agree- 
ment. It is not conceded that the first account is suggestive 
of materialistic Darwinism, but no principle of interpretation is com- 
promised, no fact is in jeopardy, by allowing that it is evolutionary 
in the historic sense, that the creation of man belongs to a series of 
creations, whether by development or otherwise is immaterial, terminat- 
ing in the finished work of God. Christianity will accept evolution 
as a historic fact, even if it can not accept the scientific interpreta- 
tion of the historic fact. Here agreement is possible again on the 
basis of facts ; the disagreement pertains to inferences. 

If evolution has any standing at all in the realm of thought, it 
ought to have a standing in history, religion, and physical order and 
government. We have already indicated faith in evolution as a his- 
toric feature of world-life, as the only explanation of history. It is 



704 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

not without its disadvantages as a "working hypothesis," for historic 
movements sometimes resemble the flow and ebb of tides, or the mo- 
tion of a swing, forward and backward, with no perceptible progress. 
The Dark Ages illustrate the historic motion without advance. This 
makes against the scientific view of evolution, whose germinal idea is 
progress, but not against the historic law of evolution, which allows 
for the play of regressional forces, and so for backslidings in history. 
In such an emergency the evolutionist may find room for lapses in 
the historic movement in his collateral theory of "struggle," which 
implies retreats as well as advances ; but the theory of struggle is a 
temporary expedient, a plank in a storm, and does not insure safety. 

In the historic, but not scientific sense, Christianity is an illus- 
tration of evolution. According to its own account, four thousand 
years of preparation passed away before the incarnate Teacher ap- 
peared ; the Messianic thought itself is a development, and the 
Messiah in the human sense was the product of the evolutional forces 
of history. As, however, this statement may be misconstrued, the 
Messiah must be lifted out of the evolutional program, and the 
historic preparation for his appearance only be considered evolutional. 

History itself, under the manipulation of a providential spirit, is 
an evolution, having for its end the elevation of the race, and is 
slowly accomplishing it. 

Man's lordship over nature is evolutionary, implying a slow con- 
quest of its forces, a slow discovery of its laws, nevertheless a con- 
quest, a discovery, a triumph in the world of matter. 

Nature itself, or, rising higher, the universe is an evolution from 
primary stages and conditions to its full form and magnificence as 
we now behold it. Christianity can not consent to the theory of a 
self-originating, or self-subsisting world, but it can consent to an 
evolved universe, evolved by law even from atomic sources, provided 
the existence of atoms is credited to the divine Being. Thus Chris- 
tianity is evolutionary in its history, in its interpretations of the cos- 
mos, and of time itself, with all its wondrous products, forces, and 
issues. With this conviction, we can not agree with Dr. B. F. 
Tefft that evolution is "wicked" "atheistic," a "denial or abandon- 
ment of revelation." This is an extravagant arraignment of a the- 
ory which, while scientifically inaccurate, is historically sustained, and 
can not be overthrown by religious denunciation of it. Such denun- 
ciation estops union, quenches the spirit of fraternity, and violates 
the canons of truth. On the basis of a limited, historic evolution, the 
two antagonists may harmonize, adjusting the theories of the one to 
the dogmas of the other, thereby all the sooner arriving at the truth. 
If evolution is an attempted revolution against truth, it is wicked, 



THE TELEOLOGICAL GROUND OF RECONCILIATION. 705 

and there can be no reconciliation ; but it is difficult to see an op- 
portunity for conflict on the historic basis as here presented. 

Thus, whether philosophy be considered in its most ideal aspects, 
or in the lowest form of scientific materialism, it may harmonize 
through the medium of its facts with Christianity, as also a system 
of facts. 

In still other particulars an agreement between philosophy and 
Christianity is possible. The doctrine of teleology is scientific ; it is 
also theological; it may, therefore, be presented as a basis of peace 
between metaphysic and religion. The materialist is expending his 
phosphorus in an attempt to eliminate the proofs of design from the 
realm of nature and, as usual in such cases, he has fore-announced 
the accomplishment of his work ; he has eliminated the idea of de- 
sign from his thought ! That is all. This is not a surprise, for the 
teleological idea is subversive of materialistic science. Many of the 
German philosophers are hostile to the idea ; but the idea is uncon- 
querable, and will ever occupy a place in the category of scientific 
truths. The Duke of Argyll indorses it as an irreproachable proof 
of the divine personality. It is a scientific idea ; theology appropri- 
ates it because it is scientific. The doctrine of the unity of nature, 
or the * ' unitarianism " of nature, points with unerring finger to the 
doctrine of teleology. The evolution of nature, or its development 
according to plan, is implicit with the doctrine of teleology. 

Still stronger support is underneath the idea. Nature is a sup- 
posed causal series ; scientifically speaking, it proceeded in its develop- 
ment after a fixed order of antecedents and consequents, otherwise 
known as the product of causality. Causality is the sign of teleology. 
Cause is the anticipation of effect. Admit the one and the other ap- 
pears. Materialism striking at one strikes at the other ; and, as it can 
not break the bond between them, it has rejected both causality and 
teleology from its vocabulary. 

The better philosophy, recoiling from the consequences of these 
eliminative attempts, approves the law of causality in nature and the 
reign of the teleological idea. K. E. von Baer, uninfluenced by relig- 
ious conceptions, points out that nature is striving after an end, and 
almost endows it with a hidden purpose of its own. This is scientific 
teleology of a refined and wholesome cast, on the basis of which the 
Christian thinker can make peace with the philosophical thinker. As 
teleology is fundamental to Christianity, and apparently fundamental 
to philosophy, there is no reason for further conflict between them. 

Lastly, the two may agree on the ethical basis. A system of 
morality, embodying correct ethical distinctions, and adapted to pro- 
mote the happiness of all races, is demanded both by religion and 

45 



706 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

science, and it is not surprising that certain ethical schemes have been 
formulated and recommended by both. The contention is as to the 
authority of the ethical scheme. If, as is claimed by the theologian, 
the Biblical scheme is of supernatural origin, its code of laws enacted 
by a personal Law-giver, to whom a personal account must be ren- 
dered, its authority will be supreme and final ; but if the ethical sys- 
tem is without supernatural force, and is the growth of man's ideas 
and expedients, an attempted adjustment of his relations to environ- 
ments, as Herbert Spencer is inclined to think, then the system is not 
authoritative and man is not responsible. More than one investigator 
has discovered that an evolutionary morality is changeable, and not 
necessarily progressive ; therefore, it may be no better in a thousand 
years than at the beginning. Mivart demands an authoritative moral- 
ity ; we demand a fixed, unchangeable ethical system, for scientific moral- 
ity makes it uncertain whether there are such things as right and 
wrong ; that is, it abolishes moral distinctions, or recognizes them only 
as products of relations. 

That conduct may be scientifically regulated we believe, but 
scientific regulation is implicit with ethical regulation. Scientific mo- 
rality must agree with supernatural ethics. The agreement is slowly 
taking place in that the scientific thinker is beginning to discern the 
scientific character of supernatural ethics, and that the attempt to 
regulate the world without primordial ethical distinctions is absurd 
and impossible. Human nature echoes the virtue of supernatural 
ethics. Among nations unblessed with Christian teaching, the strong 
and imperative ethical ideas of the New Testament have prevailed 
because they are identical with the demands of human nature. The 
ancient Persians punished falsehood with extreme severity. Seneca 
eulogized many virtues of the Christian religion. Mohammed ex- 
tolled the practical duties of hospitality, repentance, and forgiveness. 
TJie common thought of man is in harmony with the higher moral thought 
of the New Testament. Scientific moralists, recognizing the priority 
of the ethical system of the sacred writers, and that it is founded on 
human nature, as well as in divine revelation, will not much longer 
either dispute its authenticity or deny its supremacy in the regulation 
of human conduct. 

In closing this chapter, reference may be made to the reciprocal 
relations existing between Christianity and philosophy. 

1. Religion is necessary to Philosophy. The philosophical thinker 
is dependent on religion for data. He may not think so, but he can 
not solve any great problem without invading the circle of religion 
for facts. He can not interpret nature without the aid of Christian- 
ity; he can not explain conscience, volition, mental operations, or hu- 



IRRECONCILABLE VIEWS OF CHRISTIANITY. 707 

man experiences, without the aid of some of the truths of the Chris- 
tian religion. He needs religion. 

2. Philosophy is necessary to Religion. Clement intimated that 
philosophy "guided the Greeks toward Christ." It is a schoolmaster 
teaching primary truth, and pointing to its richer development in 
religion. Philosophy is thought ; religion is truth ; and as thought 
is related to truth, so philosophy is related to religion. 

The conclusion is that one is not independent of the otlier ; each needs 
the other. Plato said philosophy is the love of God. Christianity is also 
the love of God. Philosophy is Christianity ; Christianity is philosophy. 
Lactantius must not again say philosophy is "empty and fake;" Biichner, 
H'dckel, Spencer, and Huxley must not again deride religious truth and 
sport with immortal things. God is the philosophic center; God is the 
spirit of revealed religion. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE PROSPECTUS OE THE FUTURE OP CHRIS= 

TIA1MITY. 

HABAKKUK wrote: "For the earth shall be filled with the 
knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the 
sea." Leroux, the French thinker, declared that Christianity is a 
"natural stage in the progressive development of man," and will be 
superseded by a superior religion, just as it has superseded inferior 
religions. The one pronounces the prophetic triumph of Christianity ; 
the other assumes its natural dissolution. As the two views are 
irreconcilable, it will be interesting to inquire which view is correct, 
or at least to search the ground on which the views rest, that an in- 
telligent conception of the future of religion may be entertained. If 
Christianity is a mere development from preceding religions, and sub- 
ject to the general law of evolution, which would require its disap- 
pearance in a larger and richer form of religion, it will be well to 
know it ; but if it has a law of its own which will insure its per- 
petuity, universality, and supremacy, it is equally important that we 
understand it. 

Geologists tell us that in some parts of the world there is a grad- 
ual elevation of land through the operation of forces beneath, and 
that the tendency of such activity is to equilibrium of geographical 
conditions. The Christian thinker is inclined to the belief that a 
moral upheaval of the world is going on through the operation of 



708 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

moral forces from above, and that the design of it is the moral sta- 
bility and salvation of the race. No well-informed reader of the 
Bible will dispute that in its prophetical outlines the future of the 
new religion is represented as triumphant in its influence and unassail- 
able in its authority. Habakkuk is one of many who foresee the dawn 
of a day when the Gospel shall reign throughout the world. 

Yet prophecy is only a starting-point. The promise of Christianity 
to succeed in enthroning itself in the world as the only religion for 
man, is matched by its potency to fulfill its promise. The promise is 
inspiring because it can be believed ; the potency is assuring because 
it is supernatural, and, therefore, sufficient. Without the potency, 
the promise were nothing. Without the promise, the potency would 
seem to be acting aimlessly. The ground of all faith, therefore, is 
in the promise and potency of Christianity. 

To assume a triumph on the ground of promise and potency is to 
assume some things by no means inconsequential or irrelevant. Such 
a triumph as is foreshadowed implies more than a temporary exalta- 
tion of the Christian religion, and more than its political recognition 
in the world. Its great triumph will be permanent ; it will not be 
succeeded by a collapse. Once in authority it never will surrender 
it, unless the race return to the rule of the Dragon. It will be the 
religion of the world ; a religion that shall have overcome all other 
religions ; a religion universal, because it will meet universal demands ; 
a religion whose triumph can not easily be disturbed. This is a broad 
outlook, but none too generous, if the triumph is worth antici- 
pating, or shall be worth celebrating when it is realized. In this 
prevision of its future conquest we must be governed less by specu- 
lative inquiry than by those logical indications which warrant the 
inference of faith and the inspiration of prophecy. 

The prophetic conception, however pleasant to the Christian 
thinker, and however inspiring to activity in the people of God, is 
not accepted in certain outside circles as any thing more than a hal- 
lucination, or at the most as the generating cause of the religious 
enthusiasm in the world. But aside from its prophetic cast, it is 
difficult to see what can properly make against the conception itself, 
which, if it shall actualize in future history, will turn the earth into 
paradise, and every man into a son of God. If the conception mean 
sobriety, justice, philanthropy, temperance, honesty, veracity, virtue, 
order, law, civilization, everlasting progress, and the reign of super- 
natural sentiment, surely he is in league with the archfiend who can 
object to it. In its outward form, in its lowest aspect, the triumph must 
mean this much, or it can mean nothing. In its narrower phases, 
and including all that it contemplates by the reign of the Spirit, it 



THE IDEA OF UNIVERSALITY. 709 

means ennobled manhood, a spiritual race, a divine family on earth, to 
which only demons can object. The conception itself is invulnerable. 

Escaping one gauntlet, it must, however, run another. Such 
words as "impracticable," "impossible," "revolutionary," "Utopian," 
and "fanatical," are applied to it, and the methods which it proposes for 
its execution are pronounced hopelessly incompetent and injudicious. 
We shall not shrink from looking at the proposition of the Gospel 
from the stand-point of the objector, and consider just what he says, 
what he means, and what weight belongs to what he alleges. 

Is it true that the proposition to conform the world to Gospel 
ideals is Utopian, extravagant, delusive, and destructive of the prac- 
tical ends and responsibilities of life ? The triumph of the Divine re- 
ligion is implicit with the triumph of one ideal, or one system of ideals. 
It admits of no contradictory ideas ; it refuses admission to foreign ele- 
ments, except by that process of transformation which identifies them 
with itself; it stands alone in its greatness, is imperious in its author- 
ity, and bows all other ideas out of existence. Irrational as this seems 
to be, it is the most positively scientific procedure which religion has 
adopted. In the natural world one system of laws is in authority, 
ruling everywhere, and conserving the order and stability of the 
whole. Two systems would result in interminable confusion and dis- 
astrous collision. Gravitation is universal, ruling the small and the 
great, and is of one kind or knows but one law. So far as crystal- 
lization obtains in nature, it constitutes a harmonious idea, because it 
is the same everywhere, and operates according to one law. Of veg- 
etable growth the laws are the same, whether observed in China, Bra- 
zil, or California. Chemical affinity is not one thing in the Eastern 
and another in the Western Hemisphere. If Christianity conceives 
of a universal conquest, or its supremacy in the hemispheres, she 
caught the idea from Nature, whose underlying thought is unity for- 
ever. As there is but one natural government, so Christianity fore- 
shadows but one spiritual government, co-extensive with the race, co- 
eternal with God. If the lower thought of the unity, universality, 
and supremacy of the natural government is stupendous and affect- 
ing, what may not be said in eulogy of the higher thought of the 
unity, universality, and dominion of the spiritual government of God ? 
The higher is no more Utopian than the lower. 

It will assist the reader properly to estimate the prophetic idea of 
Christianity by reminding him that it is original, deep-seated, and 
constitutional, and that the program of the Church is in strict accord- 
ance with it. The idea of universality is a part of the productive 
endowment of the new religion. It is an underived, and therefore 
independent and untrammeled idea ; it is not germane to other relig- 



710 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ions, and is, therefore, without ancestral antecedents or affiliations; 
it is not an after-thought, but a primary fore-thought, of the sacred 
writers, and is, therefore, an inbred element of the divine religion. 
Max Miiller enumerates three missionary religions, because they are 
active in themselves and aggressive in extension, but only one antic- 
ipates a world-wide reign. In a political sense Mohammedanism is a 
missionary religion, but it would be truer to style it a military relig- 
ion, for its method of conquest is military, and the changes it has 
wrought have been usually rather political than religious. It is not a 
religiously missionary religion. Its triumphs, too, far from resulting 
in the extinction of opposing religious ideas, have been very meager 
and incomplete. It triumphed in Syria, but Judaism exists within 
its borders ; it triumphed in India, but Brahminism still disputes its 
authority ; it has not triumphed over Buddhism in the East or Chris- 
tianity in the West ; and as for takiug the world, it has not the 
slightest idea of doing it. This is not because it considers such a 
project undesirable, but from its stand-point it is impossible, and its 
prophets have fore-declared its final overthrow and the ascendency of 
Jesus of Nazareth. 

Buddhism is a missionary religion, but it does not avow for itself 
universal authority, and is content with dominion in Asia. 

None of the old religions of the East contemplates any extension 
of authority or a new lease of life, or the subjugation of new lands 
to its influence. Mohammedanism is the religion of motion, as Mr. 
Maurice shows, but it is of motion, not toward the aggrandizement 
of the world, but towaad ifw center of its own realm of life. It is 
active within, but not without, its circle of thought ; Brahminism, as 
he also points out, is the religion of rest, but it is the rest of death. 
Neither the motion of the one nor the inertia of the other indicates 
future growth, elasticity, or conquest. These and all other Old-world 
religions were and are exclusive, confining all activity to a single 
people or country or continent, and, so far as they fail to include all 
peoples, all countries, and all continents, they must fail in securing 
universal dominion. At the present time all religions save Christian- 
ity have abandoned the expectation of a larger influence in the world 
than they have already acquired ; they are not preparing for extended 
conquests, because they do not believe them possible. They are race 
religions ; they can not, therefore, be universal. 

Regarding Christianity as only one of a number of religions, it 
may seem to savor of presumption in its teachers to suppose a world- 
wide triumph possible ; and perhaps it is fanatical to plan for such a 
conquest. But presumptuous or not, fanatical or not, the Christian 
Church is inspired in its plannings by the vision of just such an ideal 



RELATION TO HEATHENDOM. 711 

triumph, and is putting forth in these days a herculean effort to se- 
cure it. Impossible to other religions, Christianity ventures to assume 
such a possibility to itself. This assumption, it will be allowed, is not 
the result of human designing, nor is it a late scheme of certain re- 
ligious leaders, who hope to profit by the enthusiasm it has awakened ; 
its origin is in Christianity itself. 

Other religions derive impulse to activity from man ; Christianity 
obtains its authorization to take the world from God. Other relig- 
ions depend for preservation upon human methods, often resorting to 
carnal weapons to aid in propagandism, and in the end always ex- 
hibit the feebleness of. human systems ; while Christianity depends 
upon its supernatural influence and its unaided power to impress the 
world that it is from God. In the former the inspiration to activity 
is earthly, hence intermittent and ineffectual ; in the latter it is heav- 
enly, hence permanent and efficient. 

It is sometimes urged that the introduction of a foreign religion 
into lands regulated by a native religion, long intrenched in the pub- 
lic thought and life of the people, will be attended by disorder, 
tumult, and resistance, and be promotive rather of injury than ben- 
efit, and that the proposition of Christianity to subvert such religions 
is revolutionary, iron-clad, and will be destructive of the rights of re- 
ligions and nations. Granting that this representation is correct, the 
purpose of the new religion is nevertheless legitimate, and its success 
will be its vindication. If these conflicts among the religions were 
reduced to a mere question of might, Christianity would be at liberty 
to test itself in foreign fields, for other religions have not been care- 
ful to observe the laws of neutrality in this respect, and are not enti- 
tled to exemption from invasion or trial. Mohammedanism did not 
confine itself to the country of its birth, or among the people for 
whom it was designed ; but it entered India, Persia, Palestine, and at 
one time threatened all Europe, and to-day points to a thousand 
mosques on the continent. Buddhism, reaching out beyond home, 
made its way into China, and rooted itself in the isles. Surely Chris- 
tianity may contend for the balance of power in this world without 
an infraction of the law of reciprocity. If, however, these conflicts 
may be reduced to a question of right, then Christianity has no favors 
to ask and no conciliations to offer, but is bound from its stand-point 
to undertake the suppression of all other religions, or rather to secure 
the conformity of all peoples, irrespective of former religious affini- 
ties, to its standard of truth and justice, and its order of righteous- 
ness and life. If its mission is not so broad and world-wide, it may 
be doubted if it has any mission at all, for it is the only redemptive 
religion of history ; the world needs it quite as much as any single 



712 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

people, and it can not prove itself divine except by being universal. 
It is universal or nothing ; it is for all nations or it is for none. 

With the question whether it can execute its mission peacefully — 
that is, save the world without a struggle — or whether the execution 
will involve revolution, disorder, overturning of social conditions, and 
new political organizations, it has nothing to do. Mission and method 
are two things. The settlement of the mission of religion is primary ; 
the selection of method must be left to events, or to the nature of re- 
ligion itself. If the spread of the Gospel can not be accomplished 
without some noise ; if, when Diana falls to the ground, a little dust 
is raised ; if, when King John signs the Magna Charta, he tears his 
hair and wrings his hands in rage ; if the sight of the Cross infuriates 
the infidel and the heathen, as it will ; if rebellions must follow the 
missionary ; if the footfalls of the Christ in this world shake the 
thrones of lust and civil power ; if progress must be by the sword, 
and divine covenants be proclaimed with the thunder of cannon, and 
enforced with the majesty of providential authority, so be it. Better 
that the Ganges be turned into a river of blood than that India should 
not have the Gospel ; better that Foochow be bombarded and the 
Soudan be invaded with armies than that Christian civilization should 
not progress in the Oriental world. Many worldly methods we do 
deprecate, but the Gospel must find its way into the heart of the na- 
tions. Its mission is peace ; its method may be war. Its spirit is 
love — love of order, love of righteousness ; its method may be antag- 
onism, frenzy, disorder. 

A consideration of Gospel methods is imperative only so far as to 
distinguish them from other methods employed for the realization of 
the ends of the Gospel, for it has sometimes happened that political 
methods, and particularly ecclesiastical methods, have been at vari- 
ance with well-defined Gospel methods, and deserve reprobation rather 
than commendation. For instance, when St. Cyril leads a mob of 
monks against Hypatia, and quarters her body, and rejoices over the 
bloody work, we can not see that he adopted a divinely ordained 
method for the suppression of Neo-Platonism. Again, when Constan- 
tine, ambitious for renown, supported Christianity with the sword, 
extending the reign of the Gospel by military means, it is not certain 
that he was acquainted with the Gospel idea of its own propagation. 
Again, when the Roman Catholic Church ordered inquisitions and 
martyrdoms for heretics, so-called, streaking its history with human 
blood, and exhibiting more intolerance than pagans ever showed 
toward their adversaries, it is certain that the Gospel was not ruling in 
that Church, and that the idea of religion was well-nigh forgotten by 
its priests and leaders. Nor are we quite sure that modern methods 



ARTIFICIAL RESULTS OF THE GOSPEL. 713 

are in every respect in harmony with the plainly prescribed methods 
of the Gospel, for violence, intol*erance, and iron-cladism too much 
characterize the modern Church to insure the rapidity of progress 
possible to it, although its superiority to the mediaeval Church must 
be acknowledged, and its conformity to the Gospel idea is approxi- 
mately secured. The greatest victories of the New Dispensation have 
been the result of means the most peaceful, but at the time estimated 
as the most inadequate, illustrating that Providence "hath chosen 
the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, the weak things 
to confound the mighty, base things, and things which are not to bring 
to nought things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence." 
God's methods are supreme, and will be successful. 

If the Reformation under Luther was born in a whirlwind, its 
leaders were calm, and the events inaugurated by it were governed 
by calm-producing agencies, which are still in force, and which are 
diffusing the spirit of the religious revolution throughout the world. 
It must be viewed, not merely as a violent reaction from Papal op- 
pression, but also as a grand providential movement for the recovery 
of the world. The violence apparent in its progress was the violence 
of form, or the extreme of enthusiasm, but its spirit was orderly, 
peaceful, and conservative. During Luther's lifetime, it was to his 
credit, and was a sign of the providential character of the movement, 
that it provoked no wars, either in its favor or for its suppression. 
In like manner, Methodism inaugurated the religious revolution of 
the eighteenth century in England, accomplishing its mighty task by 
Gospel methods ; but it excited animosity, and mobs, sacrifices, and 
sufferings mark her path, and make up no inconsiderable portion of 
her history. The effect of a religious movement, however, must be 
distinguished from its principles, which must be studied in their 
ethical contents, and determined to be legitimate or illegitimate by 
their adaptation to the moral elevation of man or an utter inadequacy 
to promote it. The effects of a religious movement may be natural, 
logical, and in the order of the principles underlying it, or artificial 
and antagonistic to the principles that govern it. The natural effect 
is legitimate, since it is the fruit of the principles ; the artificial is il- 
legitimate, since it takes the form of mobs and divers oppositions. 
The natural effect of Christianity is — redemption; the artificial effect 
may be — a mob. Athens roared its ridicule over the preaching of Paul ; 
Ephesus went mad ; Lystra stooped in the dust for stones ; but such 
tumults were not the intended or natural, and, therefore, legitimate, 
effects of the Gospel. 

Distinguishing Christianity, so far as its purposes are independent, 
from the results that sometimes follow it, and keeping in mind that 



714 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

a Christian method may not be a Gospel method of propagation, we 
are prepared to consider more fully just how Christianity proposes to 
execute its purposes and secure a world-wide triumph. 

First, its relation to other religions, and its facility for turning 
them to account in its own interest, deserves most careful considera- 
tion. The conquest of the world implies the disappearance of all op- 
posing religions, for, so long as a rival religion exists, it must be 
uncertain which will finally displace the other. Just what to do 
with other religions, or whether to do any thing with them ; how to 
assail them, or whether they will decay from internal maladies, or die 
from old age; what estimate should be placed upon them, and 
whether, if permitted to exist, they can render incidental service to 
mankind, — are problems that can not be hastily solved. In Christian 
lands, the chief work of Christian people is evangelization of the 
masses, or destruction of sin; in heathen lands, war is made upon 
religions, or time is spent in proselytism from pagan faiths. That the 
latter is necessary, no one will doubt who has visited heathendom or 
knows any thing of pagan religions; but, as one studies the great 
historical religions of Asia, one is inclined to think that, in the set- 
tlement of the relation of the divine religion to these human systems 
of faith, a more excellent way might be devised. 

It is conceded that the Asiatic religions are philosophical in their 
spirit and religious in their aims ; neither profoundly philosophical 
nor safely ethical, it is true, but disposed both to philosophy and re- 
ligion. Their inquiries are as broad and deep as humanity, but they 
are unable to answer them. Neither their philosophers nor sages nor 
priests can satisfy the thoughtful mood of the East, unravel the mys- 
tery that broods over life, disclose an effectual method of salvation, 
or point out the certainties beyond the grave. They inquire with 
outstretched hands ; they are anxious for truth ; but the truth-re vealer 
is not among them. 

To say that the Gospel will answer the inquiries of the pagan 
world, is true ; but in what form or manner shall the Gospel send its 
answers into those regions of moral darkness ? Shall it go as a torch 
shining upon their path, or as a glistening bayonet piercing the old 
systems to death? Is it by friction, attrition, antagonism — that is, 
enforced conformity to the divine will, that the Eastern world will 
learn what the Gospel is, and what it requires? or is there not a 
better way, by which to lift heathendom to the Gospel level ? Are 
the old systems so worthless that they should immediately be put to 
death and be buried out of sight? or do they not, even though dimly, 
foreshadow some of the cardinal truths of Christianity, which entitle 
them to a place in the Christian system ? The old religions, incom- 



BRAHMINICAL REGENERATION. 715 

petent, deficient, and even pernicious, as they are, are not wholly 
valueless, and have served a purpose which the grateful thinker will 
recognize. Wanting in specific redemptive power, they are, neverthe- 
less, the vehicles of certain divine ideas, which, under the transforming 
influence of the Gospel, may become potent and beautiful, and enter 
into the very constitution and life of the new religion. Students of 
religions are quick to discover verities common to all, or teachings so 
fundamental that religion in any form is impossible without them. 
In some religions the common principle is theistic, polytheistic or 
monotheistic; in others it is an incarnation, gross and crude, but the 
germ of a common faith ; so that all religions are half-brothers, or 
cousins, or bear some relationship to one another. 

It is this relationship, near or remote, but at all events funda- 
mental, that is the key to fraternity among the religions, and, if one 
absorb all the others, it will amount to an absorption, rather than an 
annihilation, of relationship. The conquest of Christianity does not 
imply the dissolution of the verities of other religions, but their em- 
phasis, purification, enlargement, and adaptation, with other more 
helpful truths not found in them, to the needs of men. After this 
manner Paul proceeded in his attacks upon paganism, acknowledging 
the resemblance or points of agreement between the old religions and 
that of Christ, and ignored the differences so long as the truth would 
permit. Antagonism was not his aim; reconciliation and victory 
were the ends he sought. At Athens the basis of agreement was the 
theistic idea, which he evolved into Christian monotheism, and the 
philosophers listened to him. In his conflicts with the Jews, he con- 
tinually referred to the incorporation of certain laws, truths, and 
usages of the old economy with the Christian dispensation, winning 
along that line when open rupture would have followed a direct 
attack. Brahminism, without understanding the significance of its 
own teaching, urges that man must be born again, that is, he must 
separate himself from the crowd, commune with the great unseen 
Intelligence of the universe, and be filled with the spirit of Brahm — 
a doctrine in its essence akin to the purer Christian doctrine of re- 
generation, and on the basis of which reconciliation between them is 
possible. The Hindoo, misapplying his principle, builds up a caste, 
or creates a circle of men pronounced to be better than others because 
they have given themselves to spiritual meditation, which is the 
shadow of the Church idea, needing purification and direction. How 
really to be born again the Hindoo does not know, except that he 
must strive to rise into this caste-experience; he must become a mem- 
ber of the caste ; but Christianity will teach him that such a birth is 
from God, and that the truest caste consists of regenerated and spir- 



716 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

itual souls* At this point the two come in contact, and reconcilia- 
tion, or the transformation of the Brahminical idea into the Christian 
doctrine, may, under certain educational rules, be accomplished. In 
like manner the Yama of Hindu mythology may be transformed into 
the Satan of Christianity, and difference and conflict cease. The Chris- 
tianity in Brahminism must be rescued from superstition, and the Brah- 
minism in Christianity must at least be recognized, if the union of the 
two systems, that is, the virtual triumph of Christianity, be guaranteed. 

Quite as striking is the resemblance of the incarnation idea of 
Buddhism to the true incarnation doctrine of Christianity, on which 
future mediation may be predicated and a future triumph made alto- 
gether probable. 

Christianity does not more clearly vindicate the monotheistic 
principle than Mohammedanism. The chief business of the latter is 
the proclamation of this principle. The coalescence of the two relig- 
ions on the acknowledgment of so fundamental a truth should not be 
longer delayed. 

Without continuing the thought, it is evident that in one religion 
Christianity discovers a principle of regeneration, in another a doc- 
trine of incarnation, and in a third the truth of monotheism, on 
which union with them is not impossible, and final victory over them 
a sometime certainty. In this fraternity or union, Christianity can 
not surrender any thing vital to itself, nor be lost in any other re- 
ligion, nor compromise with superstitions ; but it may accept their 
truths, refine their ideas, and gradually disclose their fulfillment in 
itself. Christianity is the fulfillment of all the truths of paganism, which 
is to be made so clear to the pagan mind that it will suffer no humili- 
ation in agreeing to it, and will not long delay in abandoning the 
one for the other, just as the shipwrecked mariner abandons his leaky 
craft for the ship of rescue. 

More important still, and to be reiterated until time shall end, 
the chief glory of the triumph of Christianity will be the universally 
acknowledged authority of its greatest principle. By virtue of its re- 
demptive element, which discriminates the new religion from the old 
faiths, Christianity alone will succeed, and bases its future antici- 
pations on its power. It is not its monotheism, or decalogue, or ordi- 
nances, or priesthood, or Sabbaths, that either constitute it a separate 
religion or insure its dominion in the future ; but redemption from 
sin through Jesus Christ is its radical doctrine, its original starting- 
point, and the inspiration of its mission in this world. So constitu- 
tional is this soteriological element that it should be preached, if 
necessary, at the expense of every other Gospel idea. All other ideas 
are auxiliary, transient, incidental, compared with this idea of salva- 



THE POLITICAL CONTENT OF REDEMPTION. 717 

tion. But the one idea includes, or is able to carry with it, all the 
other ideas of the Gospel system. Doctrines, ordinances, Church 
government and usages, are easily regulated and placed if the leading 
idea of redemption is in authority. The future triumph of the new 
religion implies the redemption of the world, or the triumph of its 
greatest principle in the children of men. 

Let us consider what is meant by redemption, or the magnitude 
of the triumph of this great principle in human affairs. The word 
" redemption" is not a particular word for a particular spiritual state, 
but the key to the largest results of the influence of Christianity on 
the human race. It includes all that is possible through Christianity 
within the area of human life; it includes physical, social, ethical, 
and intellectual, as well as spiritual, regenerations and achievements; 
it comprehends in all its aspects the constant elevation of man. 

First, its influence will be more largely exercised in the domain of 
political government, dictating laws in the interest of righteousness, sup- 
pressing evils of long standing or of recent origin, and regulating, 
without infringement on his natural rights, his political and civil life. 
The redemption of the governmental idea from oppression, which is 
the same thing as its conformity to the Gospel ideal of government, 
is as imperative as the redemption of science from fiction, or of medi- 
cine from quackery. Under its fostering care in its new form, the 
spirit of crime will disappear, the best civil institutions will prevail 
everywhere, and order, sobriety, stability, and esteem of the public 
good will characterize the administration of authority in all lands. 
History is a record of the struggle of the Gospel ideal with the gov- 
ernmental notion in its despotic and inhuman forms, recounting oc- 
casional victories, the gradual growth of humane ideas, and presaging 
the final elimination of every political heresy and governmental tyr- 
anny from the activities of the world. The Coliseum, a relic of 
pagan barbarism, is not possible now. Slavery is well-nigh a mem- 
ory. The humanity of the race embodied in civil institutions is on 
the increase. Law accords with righteousness. Despotisms are 
crumbling. The idea of self-government is contagious, wrecking in 
its development the strongly built ideas of royalty, and pointing with 
unerring certainty to the enthronement of the individual in his natu- 
ral rights. Civilization, not what it ought to be, is Christian in form, 
and is approximating the Gospel idea in spirit and impulse. The 
East dwells in the shadows of superstitions, but the West is rising 
toward God. As to the Gospel spirit must be attributed the im- 
proved changes in law, government, and civilization, so to the same 
spirit we look for speedy modifications in governmental forms which 
shall place them in harmony with God's idea of rulership, and lift up 



718 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

man to the enjoyment of every right to which his creation entitles him. 
In the future progress of the race, the redemption of government wiLl 
occupy no inconspicuous relation to the final purpose of Christianity. 

Second, under the influence of the new religion the social life of 
man, as important as his political, will undergo an equally conservative 
transformation. In the apparently small matters of dress, etiquette, 
manners, social customs, and domestic ideas and relationships, 
Christianity is revolutionizing the world, and must continue its reg- 
ulating work until all peoples conform to its wholesome hints and 
suggestions. In China, where the paternal idea is venerable and 
strong, Confucius having insisted on its sacredness, and constituted it 
a part of religion, there are no such homes as in England and the 
United States, where the Christian idea of marriage and domes- 
tic life prevails. In Mohammedan lands polygamy is not only au- 
thorized by law, but also solemnized by religion, and exists in its 
most corrupting forms, debilitating the domestic idea, and destroying 
the national life of the people. It is not surprising that in such lands 
woman is without character as an immortal being ; she is regarded as 
soulless. Nor is it surprising that the birth of a girl produces sad- 
ness, while the birth of a boy is the occasion of a great demonstration 
of joy. In Christian lands, inasmuch as polygamy does not prevail, 
woman is honored as the equal of man, and the birth of boy or girl 
is welcomed with eager pride. Evidently, it is a part of the mission 
of Christianity to redeem the home, or the domestic institution, from 
the vice of polygamy, and to elevate woman in the esteem of 
mankind. 

The etiquette of pagan lands is as debasing as their religions are 
enervating, and needs the reformatory touch of Christian teaching. 
Asiatic dress is in violation of the purest ethical standards, and needs 
the Christian pattern. In India and Egypt the burial ceremony, 
usually Mohammedan, is repugnant, without solemnity, and so dreary 
as to deprive breaking hearts of all thought of a future world ; while 
in Christian lands it is beautiful, tender, significant. The home, the 
life, the tomb, will appear in their holier aspects under the teachings 
of Him who is the way, the truth, and the life. Social regeneration 
will be one of the benefits of the new religion. 

Third, Christianity proposes to exert its healthful influence on the 
artistic sentiment of the race; in other words, it proposes to purify 
the fine arts, more particularly sculpture and painting. There are 
those who object to these arts from the fact, not here questioned, 
that they have fostered the licentious spirit, and led to the general 
corruption and degradation of the nations patronizing them. It is 
too true that many sculptors and painters have acquired fame for 



GOVERNMENT OF THE THINKING FORCES. 719 

genius at the expense of morality and purity. Idolatry and corrup- 
tion have thrived where these arts have flourished. Athens decayed 
in the presence of its statues ; Kome perished in the flames of the 
canvas. That the artistic idea is as native to man as the govern- 
mental or social idea will not, perhaps, be disputed. It has its func- 
tions, therefore; and the religion renders mankind a service that 
will purify the idea, regulate its functions, and make it instrumental 
in the public education and elevation. This service Christianity pro- 
poses to render the fine arts, under whose influence man's love of the 
beautiful will be idealized in actual forms. 

Thus far we have grouped the future work of Christianity in gov- 
ernments, institutions, homes, social customs, and artistic products ; 
it is external, therefore ; but it performs an internal work more pro- 
found, because more vital, and really the source of all external results. 
It is related to the thinking forces, the ethical ideas, and the spiritual 
lives of men quite as intimately as it is related to the homes, govern- 
ments, and arts of society. 

Fourth, in its proposed regulation of the thought of mankind, or 
the government of the thinking forces, Christianity undertakes a work 
fundamental in character and permanent in result; it is, therefore, 
a superior and supreme work. In its contests with philosophic 
thought, its purpose has been, not the annihilation, but the purifica- 
tion of thought, and the harmonization of the various systems of 
speculative inquiry with the idealities of Christianity. When har- 
monization was impossible, the old system disappeared and never re- 
vived. Whatever truth was imbedded in such systems passed over 
into the religious category, but the system from which it was derived 
perished. Thus Christianity has rescued the vital principles of the 
ancient systems from obscurity, and adopted them in the family of 
imperishable truths which constitute the Gospel system of religion. 

In its contests with modern philosophic thought its object is the 
same, but the method is different. While the aim is the rescue of 
truth from the incrustation of fiction, it also includes the annihilation 
of error, which is intelligently supported by modern thought. Ac- 
cording to the conception of Christianity materialism, which includes 
the atheistic tendency of psychology, cosmology, and the various 
phases of evolution, is a monstrous error, to be destroyed like any 
Sadducean heresy or contradictory and ruinous opinion. From want 
of internal force the ancient speculations perished ; but materialism, 
assuming a rational form, and appealing to intelligence, must be as- 
sailed, and its error eliminated from thought. Ancient thought in- 
quired for the truth ; modern thought denies the greatest truths. 
The former sought the eternal cause of things; the latter denies the 



720 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

personification of the eternal cause. Hence, Christianity not only 
assumes the defensive, but is compelled to inaugurate an aggressive 
campaign against the offensive errors of modern thought. It must 
conquer in this domain, or lose what it has already gained. Thought 
is the source of life, activity, progress, salvation. Right thought is 
as imperative as right conduct ; it precedes and regulates the conduct. 
The battle of the hour is, therefore, for supremacy in the realm of 
thought. 

Fifth, the improvement of the moral life of the world may be 
justly inferred from the presence of Christianity in it, for it is re- 
formatory, educational, and disciplinary. Its cry is against injustice, 
oppression, and inhumanity; its appeal is for law, order, sobriety, 
temperance, and righteousness; its warnings and retributions are 
urged in the interest of progress and happiness ; its decalogue encour- 
ages every virtue and condemns every vice ; its spirit promotes unity, 
hospitality, veracity, "peace on earth and good will to men." Under 
its influence the moral life of the race is quickened and the tendencies 
to evil restrained. 

Sixth, its greatest influence on mankind, however, is, not govern- 
mental, social, wsihetic, intellectual, and moral, but spiritual. Its highest 
purpose is the procreation of a spiritual race on the earth, the elim- 
ination of sin as a dominating element in the world, and the rehabili- 
tation of the old sin-cursed globe in the beauty and glory of Paradise. 
It means more than a millennium ; it means the never-ending reign 
of Jesus Christ in the race begotten by the spirit of his love. A mil- 
lennium ends ; but the spiritual reign once established will go on 
forever. To spiritualize men ; to destroy the caraal impulse ; to in- 
troduce the saintly spirit in human life ; to rule over the race so 
completely that birth by generation will be equivalent to birth by 
regeneration, or the natural birth will be also a spiritual birth; this is 
the ultimate idea of Christianity. 

The universal sway of Christianity in the world signifies the existence 
of ideal political governments, the development of a perfect social life, the 
purification of the cesthetic sentiment, the government of the intellectual ac- 
tivities of man, the reign and elevation of perfect ethical principles, and 

THE SUPREMACY AND AUTHORITY OF THE DIVINE DDEA OF LIFE, OR 
THE SPIRITUAL REGENERATION OF THE RACE. This is the Outlook from 

the observatory of the apostles. 

On what grounds may an expectation of the universal triumph of 
Christianity be based ? If it is any thing more than a hallucination, 
a pious hope, or a devout and dreamy sentiment ; if it is a rational 
expectation grounded in the philosophy of things, or the nature of 
truth, or the trend of human history, it will be inspiring to consider 



HISTORICAL PROOF OF THE SACRED RECORDS. 721 

it; otherwise it is without value. The expectation of such triumph, 
we are happy to write, has a philosophical ground, which appears in 
both a historical and statistical form, and complete enough to be as- 
suring to those who are timid in faith or vacillating in hope. 

The historical argument for the final supremacy of Christianity 
can not be overthrown, unless history itself is a delusion and with- 
out significance. The argument is two-fold in character, relating to 
the tests of Christianity by historical science, and to the integrity, and, 
therefore, the proofs, of Christianity by historical events. As a historic 
system Christianity must submit to the historic tests usually applied 
to other systems. To this it does not object; indeed, it covets a 
historical investigation conducted according to the canons of historical 
science. Such investigation has been made by critics, rationalists, 
exegetes, and theologians, the preponderance of evidence being largely 
in support of the integrity of the sacred books. The rationalists of 
Germany and Holland, under the leadership of Edward Reuss, reject 
the supernatural character of the Pentateuch, and deny its authorship 
to Moses. Another class of critics, known as Conservatives, of whom 
Konig, of Germany, and Robertson Smith, of Scotland, are repre- 
sentatives, accept the supernatural character of the Pentateuch, and 
attribute its important revelations to Moses. The contest thus far is 
largely one between radical and conservative critics, the one striking 
at the inspiration and authorship of the Pentateuch, the other care- 
fully considering both, and modifying, without materially rejecting, 
accepted views. The historical criticism raging around the Penta- 
teuch illustrates the historical attack made on all the Biblical records 
and the theologic interpretations of the Church. Renan assails the 
authorship of some of the Pauline epistles. John's Gospel, too, has 
suffered a severe but harmless examination from skeptical inquirers. 

While these one-sided investigations have been going on, leading 
to unexpected discoveries of proofs of authorship and credibility of 
the sacred records, others, among whom is George Rawlinson, have 
applied the historical tests in a purely scientific manner to these 
same records, and have overwhelmingly sustained them in spite of 
the denials of their radical opponents. Laying down four indisput- 
able canons of criticism, Mr. Rawlinson applies them vigorously to 
the Old Testament, establishing in particular its historical por- 
tions from geology, physiology, ethnology, and geography so com- 
pletely, that he has not been answered. Respecting the Pentateuch, 
he says it is "a history absolutely and in every respect true." The 
same conclusion is affirmed with respect to all the revelations of the 
Old Testament. 

It may also be observed that the subversion of the historical integrity 

46 



722 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

of the New Testament has been found an utter impossibility, for as his- 
torical criticism has taken the shape of science, and has announced 
itself in the terms of law, it has been intelligently applied to his- 
torical truth ; and applied to the historical contents of the documents 
of Christianity, they have been sustained. The historical ground of 
Christianity has been established. That ground is the philosophical 
prophecy of its stability and supremacy. Tested by historical science, 
it has had incarnation in historical events. In a limited sense Chris- 
tianity is the history of mankind. The activities of the race, the intel- 
lectual inquiries for truth, the seeking of ethical ideas and standards, 
and the conflicts and struggles of all generations, are the inspira- 
tions of fundamental religious ideas, which found final expression in 
Christianity. History is the manifestation of the religious idea ; it is 
the result of a religious, that is, a divine plan. The plan has been 
obscure, is somewhat obscure still ; the idea is either unrecognized or 
undefined ; nevertheless history is the evolution of Christianity. 

In its direct evolution, or, more particularly, in its specific rela- 
tion to mankind as a religion, the historic results have been as mani- 
fest as the spirit that produced them, and as numerous as could well 
be tabulated. In the apostolic period of Christianity the develop- 
ment of the religious life of Oriental nations was marked and perma- 
nent. In the Constantine period the authority of the Christian idea 
was extended over the Roman Empire, and superseded pagan influ- 
ence forever. In the Papal period the new religion, corrupted by 
traditions, asserted itself with enthusiasm, and acquired indisputable 
dominion in new lands. In passing, we write, given the missionary 
zeal of Francis Xavier, and Protestantism will be universal in a de- 
cade. In the days of the Lutheran Reformation the truth, separated 
from error, waxed mightily and prevailed in the greatest of Teutonic 
nations. In the Wesleyan era it saved England from despair, and 
transferred a Christian civilization to the Western hemisphere. If 
its internal history is the proof of its inspiration, its external history 
is the proof of its supremacy. Beginning at Jerusalem, it went forth 
to take the world, and it is on the march still, conquering wherever 
it goes, and promising to overturn all things in its way until it shall 
have delivered all kingdoms unto the Father. The task is difficult, 
the spectacle sublime, the result sure. The law of evolution must break, 
or triumph can not be prevented. Opposition is nothing. Infidelity is 
as the grain of dust on a chariot wheel. 

If the historical argument is of the nature of a philosophical 
prophecy respecting the future of Christianity, the statistical argument 
is of the nature of an absolute revelation confirming the prophecies, 
and indicating further fulfillment. The statistical argument is a 



THE STATISTICAL PROPHECY. 



723 



mathematical truth, or a revelation in philosophic form, and, therefore, 
entitled to more than ordinary consideration. Prophecy inspires 
hope ; history quickens faith ; revelation is of the nature of knowledge, 
and answers expectation. To include the details of the argument, or 
the items showing the relative progress of Protestantism and Eoman 
Catholicism, and the comparative growth of Christianity and Moham- 
medanism, or of false religions in general, is unnecessary. It will be 
sufficient if we indicate the steady progress of Christianity from the 
beginning in all its forms throughout the world, as an evidence of its 
persistency toward the consummation, or the attainment of final su- 
premacy. The following are regarded as the approximately correct 
statistics of the number of Christians in the world at the end of the 
different periods given : 



First Century, 500,000 


Eleventh Century, 






. 70,000,000 


Second ' 


1 2,000,000 


Twelfth 






80,000,000 


Third l 


5,000,000 


Thirteenth " 






75,000,000 


Fourth ' 


10,000,000 


Fourteenth " 






80,000,000 


Fifth 


« 15,000,000 


Fifteenth " 






100,000,000 


Sixth 


< 20,000,000 


Sixteenth " 






125,000,000 


Seventh ' 


' 25,000,000 


Seventeenth " 






155,000,000 


Eighth ' 


30.000,000 


Eighteenth ". 






200,000,000 


Ninth ' 


1 40,000,000 


1880, A. D. ... 






410,900,000 


Tenth ' 


..... 50.000,000 











Under the Papal regime the progress of Christianity was stayed, 
and came almost to a stand-still in the thirteenth century ; but under 
Protestant direction it now controls the civilization and development 
of fully one-third of the populations of the globe. 

This, however, is not the strongest way of putting the case, for 
Dr. Schem has figured it out that in 1876 nearly seven hundred 
millions of people, or quite one-half of the world's populations, were 
under the dominion of Christian governments, showing a gratifying 
extension of the governmental ideas of Christianity. "One hundred 
and eighty-years ago," says Dr. D. Dorchester, "only 155,000,000 
of the earth's population were under Christian governments." 

In an equally striking manner it can be made to appear that, 
while the territorial area of the globe is about fifty-two millions of 
square miles, Christian governments exercise legitimate control over 
thirty-two millions of square miles, showing that their authority is on 
the increase, and exceeds that of all other religions combined. The 
argument from statistics points to an ever-widening domain of 
Christian influence, and the final supremacy of Christianity as a 
religion. 

If any thing more is needed to confirm this mathematical view of 
the future, we might draw on what we are pleased to style the 



724 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

retributive argument, or the argument of facts which portend the doom 
of all other religions. " Mohammedanism," says Ram Chandra Bose, 
" has proved a failure." It is too late to reconstruct it or purify it ; 
it must go; it will be absorbed and disappear. " Mere secular edu- 
cation," says Dr. T. J. Scott, " would wreck Brahminism ;" but as it 
would fail to "reconstruct India morally," he adds, "the Gospel is 
pulling down the stronghold of Brahminism with irresistible effect, 
and in its stead is rearing the temple of God." Dr. J. M. Thoburn 
reports of Parseeism that, "as a religious system, like every thing 
else which ' decayeth and waxeth old,' it must soon vanish away." 
He asserts that education alone will demolish it. Buddhism is, 
perhaps, the most difficult religion to subvert, but Dr. E. Wentworth 
observes that, "half the difficulty of a grand undertaking is accom- 
plished when we know what we have to contend with." The old re- 
ligion is a mountain in our path, but "faith, prayer, and sacrifice 
vanquish devils and overturn mountains." Taoism, according to Dr. 
V. C. Hart, "is sere and ready to decay. Its weird and grotesque 
growth stands palsied in the presence of true education and religion." 
"Shintoism," says Dr. R. S. Maclay, "has lost much of its individu- 
ality and self-assertion ;" and, " like many other systems of a similar 
character, it is gradually moving to take its place in the silent cham- 
bers of the past." As to Confucianism, it can not properly be enu- 
merated among the religions of the East ; nevertheless, granting it a 
religious rank, Dr. S. L. Baldwin affirms, that the "awakening in- 
tellect and conscience of China can not be satisfied with the negative 
character of Confucianism." It must, therefore, finally be displaced 
by a positive, religion. 

From these estimates of missionaries, it is evident that the old re- 
ligions are enfeebled by their own corruptions and superstitions, and 
are on the way to extinction, public education being sufficient in 
many cases to entirely overthrow the nation's faith in them. Time 
alone will visit with destruction these hoary-headed faiths ; but edu- 
cation and religion will undermine their foundations and reduce them 
to chaos. 

In the Vatican gallery is a prophetic painting of the fate of 
paganism. It represents a broken column, prostrate, partly covered 
with sand, and partly hidden with rankest weeds. Thus paganism, 
hydra-headed and old as the ages, shall fall and be buried out of sight. 

The prospectus of Christianity contains a recital of the overthrow 
of paganism, the universal sway of Christian civilization, the sancti- 
fi cation of political government, and the spiritualization of the human 
race, or the elimination of evil from the abodes of men. 



THE RACE OF IDEAS. 725 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

CHRISTIANITY A PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS 

FINALITY. 

PLATO'S allusion in the Republic to a " torch-race on horseback" 
was founded on a beautiful custom that obtained in the Panathe- 
naean festivals, in which the contestants, seizing torches lighted from 
the altars of sacrifice, ran for the prize, he securing it whose torch 
did not expire in the race. 

Of another torch-race, which began in Plato's time and still con- 
tinues, we moderns are witnesses, It is the race of ideas, of which 
religion and philosophy are the representatives; both have drawn 
their light from sacrificial fires ; and both have run along the path- 
way of the centuries, sometimes with fatiguing steps, but usually 
with a hopeful enthusiasm and a belief in final victory. Perhaps it 
is too early in the race, long as it has been going on, to prepare 
wreaths for the victor, not knowing which it shall be ; but, judging 
from appearances, relative achievements, and future prospects, the 
lamp of philosophy, already nearly extinguished, must grow dimmer 
with the coming years, while the light of Christianity, like that of 
the sun, is as bright as the day it first shone upon the earth, with no 
indications of a decline and no signs of extinction. The verdict of 
history is in favor of Christianity ; the voices of prophecy, of evolu- 
tion, of the impulse of progress, and of human hope, are musical 
with the strains of a jubilee over its final vindication in the world. 

To speak of a final religion, or of a stereotyped religious idea, 
superseding all others and governing all men ; to speak of one relig- 
ion absorbing all others and conforming the race-life to its ideals, — 
may savor of strong prejudice in its favor, but such prejudice is 
rooted in the reason of things. It is a philosophical, not a religious, 
prejudice that justifies the extreme faith here uttered. One school 
of philosophers, materialistic in their sense of things, may pronounce 
such faith inconsistent with the spirit of progress, which, while it up- 
roots some things and establishes others, does not point to final settle- 
ment of any thing, or at least to final things, in this period of the 
world's history. It should not be forgotten that the best idea of 
progress is a tendency to finality in all things. A drifting universe, 
either of thought or matter, is contrary to the highest conception of 
order, stability, and progress. A final religion, a final philosophy, a 



726 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

final Bible, a final God, a final eternity, are things which the human 
mind craves, and to which progress tends. 

Again, the votaries of the old religions, indisposed to accept the 
solution of the supreme problems according to Christianity, will be 
slow to embrace the idea of a final religion for man, since they under- 
stand that the universal, that is, the final, element is wanting in their 
own. They prefer the present state of conflict to the extinction of 
their ancestral and traditional faiths, and the enthronement of what 
they regard as a foreign religion. From their stand-point, Christian- 
ity is as defective in the universal element as their own religions, 
and they pretend to see no benefit in the exchange of their faith for 
that of another people. All talk, then, of a final religion strikes the 
materialist and the traditionalist as the acme of absurdity, as the out- 
burst of that bigotry which religion is always supposed to inspire. 

Nevertheless, there is a finality in the most literal, as well as in 
the highest accommodated, sense in both philosophy and religion, to 
which we do well to take heed. Gravitation is a finality in physics ; 
memory is a finality in psychology ; the circle is a finality in mathe- 
matics ; the circulation of the blood is a finality in physiology. In 
like manner, there are certain religious finalities, which constitute the 
frame-work of Christianity and make it the final religion. These we 
shall proceed to emphasize. 

We affirm, first, that Christianity is a philosophic finality, or the 
finality of all philosophic truth; but we do not so affirm in a dog- 
matic, but rather in a philosophic, spirit. It is not meant that 
Christianity will supersede a true philosophy, for the two are as con- 
sistent as mathematics and astronomy; but it will extinguish false 
philosophy respecting truth, and become the end and explanation of 
a genuine philosophy in its treatment of the highest truth. In itself, 
it will prove to be the true philosophy of all truth, without assuming 
a philosophic form, or usurping the prerogatives of philosophy as a 
distinct realm of thought and investigation. In essence, Christianity 
is philosophy ; in form, it is religion. As to its ends, Christianity is 
philosophical ; as to its ideals, it is religious. 

In their methods of arriving at truth, secular philosophy and 
the Christian religion have widely differed, the method of the one 
being rationalistic, the method of the other being supernaturalistic. 
The ends, however, are the same. As one may travel from New 
York to San Francisco by water and another by railroad, the dif- 
ference in these cases being the method of travel or the routes taken, 
while the end is the same, so one may seek the truth by the philo- 
sophical, and another by the Biblical, method, each having the same 
end in view. The same truths are before philosopher and inspired 



MISAPPLICATION OF METHOD. 727 

writer. One seeks to discover, the other proposes to reveal. One 
asks questions, the other listens to answers. One is an interrogation, 
the other is an echo. Philosophy is an anxious inquirer after truth; 
Christianity is a calm revealer of truth. The methods are exactly 
opposite, but the results, if the one could go as far as the other, would 
be precisely identical. Hackel would throw himself into a rage to be 
told that the philosophical method must result in the establishment of 
supernatural truth, but it is difficult to account for the glorification of 
that method if it breaks down when applied to the highest truth. To 
this Hackel might reply that it is the truth that breaks down, which 
would be very like an . astronomer condemning the stars because his 
telescope did not reveal them. If there is any failure in the applica- 
tion of the method to the truth, it is the failure of method, and not 
the failure of truth. All along in these discussions we have lamented 
the break-down of the philosophical method at vital points, implying 
the necessity of the purification of the method whereby supernatural 
truth may be discerned and approved. Besides, the unity of truth, 
the oneness of the natural and supernatural, justifies the application 
of the philosophical method to the supernatural, and the supernatural 
method to the natural; that is, an interchange of methods is not at 
all impossible, since the truths to be ascertained belong to both 
spheres of thought and inquiry. The theologic thinker is quite will- 
ing to submit revealed truth to philosophic analysis, but the material- 
ist is quite unwilling to submit philosophic truth to spiritual intro- 
spection. Yet to this one must come as well as the other. 

In the hands of its friends the philosophical method has been 
prostituted to the support of wretched theories, as Darwin urged nat- 
ural selection, Hackel the mechanical theory of the universe, and 
Bain the mechanical process of thought, showing either an awkward 
use of the instrument — reason — or a false report of the results, or 
both. Is theory or fact the issue of the philosophic method? Is 
opinion to be maintained or truth to be sought by its use ? Hitherto 
scientific fictions, heresies, theories, opinions, and philosophic falsehoods 
have been sustained by the philosophic method, just as superstitions, 
traditions, mysticisms, and fanaticisms have been apparently justified by 
the religious or supernaturalistic method. The time has arrived not 
only for the purification of method, but its rescue from perversion 
and its legitimate application to truth. A philosophic method, a ra- 
tionalistic process, must terminate in the support of the ultimate 
truths of Christianity, otherwise Christianity is vulnerable at its 
strongest point. Supernatural truth is as philosophical as natural 
truth, and the method applied to the latter may also be applied to 
the former, so far as the method itself has been developed or per- 



728 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

fected. As the algebraic method of to-day is an improvement over 
such method of yesterday, so the philosophic method is developing, 
and must be adapted finally to test all truth, and will establish the 
highest truth. This is the purport of that method, this is its use in 
the realm of thought, and this foreshadows its relation to religion. 

Granting that the philosophic method has been turned against 
highest truth, it is evident that such truth has received its strongest 
vindication at the hands of that method. With its predilection for 
atheistic sentiment, by virtue of its method philosophy has been com- 
pelled to declare in favor of the fundamental idea of God. We do 
not say it has declared for God, but it supports the idea of a Supreme 
Power as a condition of thought, as a condition of existence. Ham- 
ilton, Darwin, and Spencer, of the moderns, and Socrates and Plato, 
of the ancients, demonstrated the idea of God as an ultimate fact of 
philosophy. In order to save Darwinism, evolution, and kindred the- 
ories from a total wreck, it has come to pass that their founders have 
proclaimed their compatibility with the theistic hypothesis. Foresee- 
ing the utter impossibility of blotting out the divine name from the 
universe, the friends of evolution bolster it up by assuming that it 
was the divine method by which the Supreme Power inaugurated the 
universe. Here is a philosophic theory transformed into a divine idea 
for self-preservation. Thus it may happen that, in order to self-exist- 
ence, nearly every philosophic theory will clothe itself in divine gar- 
ments, and walk the earth as a divine idea, sovereign at last in the 
thought of man. To this we have no objection ; this is what we ex- 
pect. The drift of philosophy is toward a demonstration of ultimate 
truth ; that is, the philosophic method, rescued from its corruptions 
and misapplications, is at last reaffirming the truths first made known 
by the supernaturalistic method, and justifying them on its grounds 
and in its own way. In natural order the supernaturalistic method 
preceded the philosophic method in the ascertainment of religious 
truth, but the philosophic method is now that by which religious truth 
is confirmed. The supernaturalistic method for revelation; the phil- 
osophic method for confirmation. Confirmation is as valuable as rev- 
elation ; confirmation is revelation ; the philosophic is the supernatu- 
ralistic method, applied later in the historic order for the demonstration 
of revelation. Hence it is not too much to say that Christianity is a 
philosophic finality, because the philosophic method conducts to its 
ultimate truths. 

Again, Christianity must he accepted as a philosophic finality, or 
final solution of all philosophic truth, on the ground that its own truths 
are essentially philosophical, rational, and of the highest utility to man. 
Christianity is a philosophical religion ; it is a philosophy of truth 



THE RATIONALE OF DIVINE TRUTHS. 729 

in its fundamentals and a philosophy of knowledge in its revela- 
tions. In making this statement we do not forget the great mys- 
teries of religion, but they are the mysteries of philosophy as well, 
and without religious illumination must be utterably inexplicable. 
Being, generation, life, matter, God, immortality, and man are 
stupendous mysteries, taxing philosophy beyond its ability, and re- 
ducing religion to a fabled mass but for its supernatural revelation. 
This is our relief in the investigation of these mysteries, and the only 
relief. To dispense with the mysteries by calling them absurdities 
will not do ; they are truths, a knowledge of which is essential to hu- 
man welfare, human hope, and human faith, but such knowledge is 
not attainable through philosophy alone. Christianity is the key to 
final or ultimate knowledge of these subjects, and, therefore, superior 
to philosophy, which, aiming at such knowledge and anxious for it, 
falls short of acquiring it. In this respect, while Christianity is 
strictly philosophical, it can not be said that philosophy is strictly re- 
ligious. The two are half-brothers, both exhibiting a natural likeness, 
but only one a supernatural image. As the supernatural is the end 
of the natural, so Christianity is the end of philosophy. 

Then it must be remembered that the truths of Christianity are 
riot only ultimate ; they are also rational. An ultimate truth is not 
necessarily rational in the sense that it may be apprehended as ra- 
tional ; it must be rational, however, in its content or essence. Fre- 
quently not a few of the sublime revelations of Christianity are ridi- 
culed on the ground of an alleged disharmony with reason, the 
skeptic failing to recognize the difference between the rationale of the 
truth he assails and the rationale of his apprehension or assault. The 
incarnation has been the subject of ridiculous interpretations, because 
human reason did not recognize the divine reason of the truth. Yet 
incarnation is as rational as generation ; both are great mysteries. 

The so-called irrational truths of the Bible are on a par with the 
so-called irrational truths of natural theology ; in many instances the 
truths of one sphere are the truths of the other, and both must be 
allowed or both rejected. Truth, natural or supernatural, is rational. 
Philosophy appropriates natural truth, discerning its rationality, while 
Christianity appropriates supernatural truth, pointing out its inner 
consistency and beauty. To many minds the rational character of 
spiritual truth is more patent than the rational character of natural 
truth, since the latter reaches a limit and solves nothing, while the 
former knows no limit and solves every thing. Verily, the reason 
that solves or discerns the highest truth is the highest reason. To 
those whose reason is spiritualized or dominated by the divine wis- 
dom, and whose interior sense enables them to penetrate through all 



730 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

seemiog irrationality of form to actual rationality of essence, and so 
discern the sublimity of truth, a knowledge of infinite things is not 
impossible. Because Christianity is a philosophical ultimate on the 
one hand, and a rational religion on the other, it may truly claim to 
be a finality. 

It might well be observed that the mysteries of Christianity, as 
well as its demonstrable truths, are philosophical and rational, with- 
out reproach in the realm of thought, without discoverable weaknesses 
in their inner relations. That these mysteries amaze and often per- 
plex the thinker, we shall not deny ; but a mystery is not a contra- 
diction. Neander says all contradictions are reconciled in Jesus 
Christ. To this may we add that all mysteries are solved in Jesus 
Christ, because they all emanate from him. One thing is certain : 
Biblical truths do not outrage the reason like Kant's Antinomies, nor 
do they confound the inquirer like many philosophical theories ; but 
grow in proportion as they are studied, and demonstrate their high- 
born character as they are investigated. The atomic theory of crea- 
tion, with the divine element eliminated, is more mysterious than the 
Mosaic revelation, while the evolutionary theory of the origin of man 
requires more faith than any miracle recorded in the sacred Gospels. 
Speculative philosophy never had so many embarrassments to meet as 
now, for in the ancient period truth was not in its way, but in these 
days, its theories, its suggestions, its teachings, are immediately sub- 
jected to that final test of all things — the religious canon. Unwilling 
to admit the test, nevertheless the test is applied, and error is exposed. 
There are no antinomies in Christianity ; there are mysteries. There 
is no speculation in religion ; there is philosophic rationality. Spec- 
ulation assumes to be the criterion of truth, but truth is the criterion 
of speculation. 

The stones, the trees, the oceans, the mountains may test gravita- 
tion, but in a broader sense gravitation tests the whole earth. In a 
narrow sense philosophy may test Christianity, but in the final ver- 
dict it will be seen that Christianity has tested philosophy. In the 
fourth pair of his antimomies Kant supports a belief in God, and 
then contradicts it by a contrary supposition, leaving the thinker to 
work himself out of the logical dilemma, and creating a doubt as to 
the value of reason and the integrity of knowledge. In like manner, 
in the third pair of antinomies, he advocates both necessity and lib- 
erty, requiring escape in order to ascertain the truth. In such follies 
and to such extremes of absurdity Christianity does not indulge. It 
is one thing or the other. It affirms the existence of God, and never 
compromises the affirmation. It declares human liberty, basing 
thereon the doctrine of human responsibility, and never intimates 



THE INHERENT LOGIC OF TRUTH 731 

the reign of the fatalistic spirit in human affairs. Kant proposes the 
singular justification of his antinomies that they are essential to 
knowledge ; that is, the knowledge of truth lies along the pathway 
of these contraries, or within their boundaries. On no such cast-iron 
logical regulations is Christianity dependent for its settlement of the 
questions of truth ; it has a logic of its own at once fascinating, com- 
plete, irresistible ; it is the inherent logic of truth. Its mysteries belong 
not to the common categories of thought, and are not strictly amena- 
ble to the standards of Aristotle and Bacon. However, they are not 
inimical to philosophic reason, since they are rational in their in- 
most contents and in harmony with truth not mysterious. Mysterious 
truth is not in antagonism with transparent truth. Miracle, proph- 
ecy, inspiration, regeneration, and redemption, considered as exclu- 
sive religious truths, are as rational as the more exclusive philosoph- 
ical doctrines of creation, providence, biogenesis, and the conservation 
of forces. To the natural mind, however, the former seem like ab- 
stractions, or borrowed and refined superstitions, while the latter 
appear as concrete facts within the domain of observation, analysis, 
and utility. The higher truths seem all but unreal, while the lower 
advertise their reality. The conflict of the spiritual and the ma- 
terial is the conflict of the apparently unreal and the real; the 
antagonism of philosophy and Christianity is the antagonism of lower 
and higher, of sense and spirit. Christianity is spirit-philosophy, of 
which its mysteries, the greater realities, are the proofs. The rational 
content of Christianity is the solution of all philosophic truth. 

We dare also to hazard the assertion that Christianity is a very 
practical philosophical scheme, adapted both in its spirit and purposes 
to the present life, and, therefore, destined to be final. Who does 
not wonder at the endless stupidities, the "insoluble contradictions," 
and the abstruse vagaries with which the tomes of philosophers are 
filled? Much of it, aside from its relation to some exploded theory, 
is wholly useless. The wordy discussions of nominalists and realists, 
of idealists and sensationalists, of evolutionists and materialists, have 
a place, doubtless, in the progress of thought, and are mile-posts 
along the weary way to truth ; but the average man knows nothing 
of their existence, could not understand them if reported to him, and 
lives in another realm entirely. The " dirt philosophy" of the day is 
not vital to human history. Atomism is destitute of ethical influence; 
Herbert Spencer's scientific morality is an unapplied fiction ; Hackel's 
constructive ethical system is without inherent strength or adaptation. 

On the other hand, Christianity is vital in its philosophical rela- 
tions, or it is nothing ; it imparts life to human history or infects it 
with spiritual insensibility. In its adaptations to man, in its power to 



732 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

promote his welfare, to pilot him in darkness, and create in him im- 
mortal hope, its philosophical character is clearly revealed. It is a 
philosophy of life; it is a philosophy of the universe; it is a philosophy 
of man; it is a philosophy of God. Of life, it reveals not only the 
origin, but also the Originator ; of the universe, it reveals the 
primordial, the Platonic, plan and its execution. Of man, it is a 
complete revelation, both as to his possibilities and certainties. Its 
laws, its promises, its truths, its mysteries, whose edges wear an eternal 
hue, have in them an inspiring force that he feels, a guiding influence 
that he obeys, a redemptive power to which he submits. Of God, it 
is decisive, revealing him in his unity and proclaiming him as the 
world's Lawgiver, Benefactor, and Deliverer. 

Perhaps right here the dividing line between Christianity and 
Philosophy proper is more conspicuous than at any other point. 
Christianity is more philosophical than "philosophy, because it is more 
rational, because it is more useful. The uplifting, guiding, redeem- 
ing power of the one finds no counterpart in the other. The revela- 
tions of the one are not at all matched by the conclusions of the 
other. Hackel, Darwin, and Spencer have rendered no such service 
to the world as Moses, John, and Paul. It must also be confessed 
that Christianity, for its revelations, is in no sense indebted to philoso- 
phy ; it did not borrow its truths, it originated them ; it does not 
work out its truths, it states them. Truth may be the end of philoso- 
phy, but Christianity is the end of truth. While Philosophy has been 
working toward the end, Christianity has reached it. Christianity 
is truth, the end of truth, beyond which philosophy can not go, as far 
as which it has not yet come. If Christianity is the end of truth, it 
must also be the end of philosophy ; hence, philosophy must finally 
be absorbed by Christianity. If ultimate truth absorbs all related or 
intermediate truth, and the highest truth includes the lowest, then 
philosophical truth at last must be lost in the broader truth of Chris- 
tianity, which is the same as saying that Christianity is the final phi- 
losophy. As such we proclaim it. Final in its truths, it must be final 
as a philosophy of truth. 

As Christianity is the final philosophy, so is it the final religion. 
It is not only the supreme religion, it is the only supernatural relig- 
ion, and therefore the only religion. All others in their sober con- 
tents are mere adumbrations, reflections, or imitations, to be fulfilled, 
and, therefore, to be lost in that which shall endure forever. Except 
among those who, dissatisfied with certain theologic phases of Chris- 
tianity, are prophesying great structural changes in the religious 
concept, the world is not anticipating a new religion, nor are there 
any signs of preparation for another. An entirely new religion, em- 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF THE FUTURE. 733 

bodying the principal features of all religions, and supplanting all, 
because superior to all, is not a possibility. Such eclecticism has 
been mooted in certain quarters, but the expectation of a religion 
made up of eliminations, combinations, and additions, is theoretical. 
Even should such a religion appear, just so far as it contained the 
truth, it would be nothing more than Christianity under a new name, 
and in a disguised form, aiming at the very ends it proposes, and by 
methods, just so far as they would prove effectual, in harmony with 
its agencies and revelations. In a sense not applicable to any other 
religion Christianity is the purest eclecticism, or a revelation of the 
absolute truth of all religions, and filled only with the highest and 
holiest inspirations both from earth and heaven. Improvement on 
the eclectic plan is impossible. Hence, Christianity is a religious 
finality. 

What, it may be asked, is meant by religious finality ? It is not 
intended to mean that the Christianity of the future will be un- 
changed in its particulars, nor that its truths will not seem larger, 
richer, fuller, than they do now, nor that it will be unantagonized by 
ideas apparently religious and contrary to itself. As we have shown, 
there is the "new in Christianity " that must be brought to light; 
there is an unexplored realm, a vast deep, of truth that must be en- 
tered, and report made of its contents. The anticipation of the new 
is an inspiration to faith and labor, but the new will not be inconsist- 
ent with the old ; it will be more glorious ; it will be broader, higher, 
deeper ; it will be a fathomless ocean. The discovery of the hidden 
realms of truth will be a part of the joyous labor of the future, re- 
sulting in the relief of Christianity from its accessories of error and 
superstition, and its enlargement of just such revelations which up to 
this time the human mind has been too timid to anticipate, and too 
sluggish to desire. Man's ability to apprehend Christianity in its 
larger aspects is by no means exhausted. His studies of its truths 
have but begun. He must search more and more ; he must go into 
the depths. In his deep-sea soundings he may find pearls that the 
fathers never saw; he may bathe in waters that, unlike Lethean 
streams, will revivify his intellectual aspiration, and produce a widen- 
ing consciousness of existence that he never before felt. Neither 
Eusebius, nor Luther, nor Knox, nor Wesley, nor all the religious 
teachers of the past fully disclosed the divine mysteries as taught in 
the holy oracles. Future generations will have something to do if 
they comprehend the majesty and magnitude of the world of truth. 

Speculation, however, on the probable developments of Christian- 
ity must cease, lest we forget the important point that whatever the 
development, and larger as the Christianity of the future will be, it 



734 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

will be the old Christianity of Christ, and John, and Paul, the 
Christianity we ourselves have received. In its unfolded character, 
the old better known, and the new in strictest harmony with it, it 
will be as it is now, the final announcement of God to man, and ac- 
cepted, where accepted at all, as the only religion worth having or 
protecting. For this belief or anticipation several reasons may be 
stated. 

First, Christianity is a religion of positive affirmations. Emerson 
insists upon affirmations, and that they be as strong and loud as can- 
non balls. There is nothing so empty, so powerless as a negation ; it 
is a fuse without powder. Agnosticism is the crater of the extinct 
volcano of Pyrrhonism. In religion one affirmation is worth more than 
a thousand negations, one truth is more valuable than all the errors 
of the centuries. Light, not darkness ; knowledge, not ignorance ; 
certainties, not dubieties ; are wanted in the realm of religious thought. 
Is it answered that in nothing can man be less positive in belief, less 
sure that he is correct in thought, than in religion ? that he must deal 
with traditions, superstitions, legends, theologies? that religious truths 
so-called are the products, not of the brain, but of the heart? and 
that Christianity, in assuming to be supernatural, deprives itself of a 
rational basis, and must appeal to credulity for support ? Some things 
are not. to be denied, even though they compel an abandonment of 
some supposed truths, and a change of theological position. It is 
true that the current of religious thought, following it in its course 
down the ages, appears at times like a muddy stream, in some places 
more like a stagnant pool, and so frequently it flows on like a turbid 
river. Of the mythological religions the heart grows sick in recount- 
ing the oppressions, the idolatries, the sacrifices, and the benumbing 
influence which under their reign were everywhere sure to exist. Of 
the great historical religions in the East more can be said in their 
favor since, in a preliminary sense, they were related to that which 
followed, and to a degree their old teachers, ignorant of truth, 
were yet stirred by the deepest religious impulses, but if they fore- 
glimpsed the necessities of the race they were unable to provide for 
them, and so man, in their hands, was as helpless as ever. 

In Mohammedanism, a religion on crutches, a religion lame in one 
foot at least, we see an advance, but only in one direction. The truth 
here gained is shrouded in superstition as distressing and in darkness 
as dense as that which preceded it, showing that the core of a help- 
ful religion can not be any one of a number of great truths, but it 
must be the central truth of the kingdom of God. 

The need of another religion, without superstition, without an en- 
ervating aim, without a depressing effect, has its demonstration in the 



TEE AFFIRMATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 735 

weaknesses of the world's religions. Such religion is Christianity. 
Is tradition a weakness in religion ? Jesus condemns tradition. Is 
fable a positive infirmity of religion? Jesus says, " I am the truth," 
lifting his religion above fable. Are other religions barren of a ma- 
jestic purpose? Jesus says, "The Son of Man is come to seek and 
to save that which was lost." Neither Gautama, nor Confucius, nor 
Mohammed centered their activities in a purpose so philanthropic or 
exhibited a spirit so divine. Separating Christianity, as Jesus war- 
rants us in doing, from superstition, fable, mythology, and tradition, 
its superiority to all religions is apparent, and its positive character 
is the more readily apprehended. It deals neither with negations 
nor superstitions, but consists of the most positive and coherent 
affirmations on the sublimest truths ever addressed to man. Its great 
and growing power lies just here. It affirms the existence of God, 
the origin of the worlds, the creation of man, the moral degeneracy of 
the race, the authority of supernatural ethical disti?ictions, the eternal 
wages of sin, the nature and necessity of holiness, the hope of redemp- 
tion in Jesus Christ, the certainty of death, the promise of resurrection, 
the final accountability of man at the judgment-seat of Christ, and the 
eternity of the rewards and retributions pronounced upon the last day. 
On subjects so vital Christianity is transparent; it utters no un- 
certain sound; it misleads no honest inquirer, for if the Gospel be 
hid it is hid to them that are lost ; it inspires every truth-seeker, 
being truth itself. On many themes the Bible is not as explicit 
as curiosity might desire, nor as clear as some of its teachers 
have wished; but such themes are oftener scientific than religious. 
Religious truths, which concern human character and are related 
to human happiness and destiny, are positively, strongly, repeatedly 
affirmed, so that the wise student thereof may sufficiently appre- 
hend them. Affirmed truth is not necessarily explained truth. 
God's existence is affirmed, but not defined. Regeneration is an af- 
firmed necessity, but the process by which it is secured, except that 
the Holy Spirit is the instrument, is not explained. Truths, not ex- 
planations ; theorems, not solutions ; affirmations, not negations, 
constitute the substance of the divine revelations, the strength and 
frame-work of Christianity. On this ground we predicate, not only 
the solidity of Christianity, but also its perpetuity and finality as a 
religion. 

Again, the vital principle of Christianity is a guarantee of its fu- 
ture and its finality as religious truth. The continued reign of a re- 
ligion is dependent upon the inherent vitality of its sovereign or 
predominant principle. External forces, usurpation of rights, and 
public misinstruction, may enthrone a false religion and perpetuate 



736 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

it many centuries; but its decadence is certain and its overthrow 
final. Time is long enough to work its revenge on error. False re- 
ligions must perish, because falsehood is perishable in itself. Equally 
uncertain are those religions whose great truths, drawn from divine 
sources, are enshrined in superstition, because superstition is doomed. 
Mohammedanism, with its one underlying truth, will not be able to 
save itself, first because the one truth of the unity of God is not 
sufficient for a religion, and, second, because, if sufficient, its incrus- 
tation of superstition quenches its vitality and reduces its activity to 
a routine movement of blind and helpless faith. In time, therefore, 
it must be a religion of history. 

Monotheism, as a sovereign principle, is fundamental to Chris- 
tianity, but monotheism alone is not Christianity. From the great 
doctrine of the unity of God issue many great truths, facts, and ele- 
mentary teachings, all essential to religion, as the ideas of authority, 
will, law, obedience, homage, and duty. The idea of God's sover- 
eignty projects into the world the thoughts of government, providence, 
justice, equity, force, order, and stability. However sovereign these 
thoughts, however essential to religion, they do not constitute the 
highestfreiigion. More is wanted than sovereignty. Religion does not 
reach its highest altitude in* law or force. This was the supreme 
weakness of Judaism, as it is the religious infirmity of Mohammedan- 
ism. The Judaic God was intensely personal, a ruler; but decay 
smote Judaism like drought the king's garden. The personality of 
God was sounded by Mohammed, and it echoed over the continents, 
and paganism turned pale, and atheism, sought a cave; but it has 
proved insufficient. 

For a like reason Brahminism has suffered an almost total eclipse, 
and is bound to go out in the blackest darkness. It is not enough 
that Brahm is intelligence or light, since the world has need of 
something more than light. Besides, the average Brahmin, worship- 
ing Intelligence, does not receive knowledge, and inquiring for Light 
he never finds it. He worships emptiness, and is empty in return. 
He waits at the altar for revelations, but they never come. He prates 
of wisdom, but he has it not. He speaks of light, but ever walks in 
darkness. Buddhism, dissatisfied with a distant or abstract light, in- 
carnates the divine intelligence in one of the race, a child or man, 
whom it styles Lama or the priest, but from whom the worshiper re- 
ceives nothing. With this incarnation Buddhism stops, and the 
Buddhist stops, without relief from sin, inspiration to holiness, or en- 
couragement to activity. 

These are variations of the monotheistic principle, sovereign in 
the Eastern religions, proving how incompetent any religion is for 



VITAL PRINCIPLES OF THE FINAL RELIGION. 737 

the highest tasks without another or the life-giving endowment. 
It is at this point that the great difference between Christianity and 
the historical religions is manifest, a difference as wide as that be- 
tween life and death. Its vital principle is not the sovereignty of 
God. While the fact of the divine existence is as prominent and as 
potent in Christianity as in any other religion, it is not the supreme 
fact ; it is rather the initiatory step toward the religion whose central 
truth is something else. The difference between the sovereignty of 
God and the incarnation of God measures the difference between the 
divine and all human religions. The latter are rooted in sovereignty; 
the former begins with, the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Incarnation, 
not monotJieism, is the vital principle of Christianity. Jesus Christ 
is the chief corner-stone of the new religion. Recognizing law, sov- 
ereignty, government, providence, justice, and force, as the prelimi- 
nary ideas of religion, Christianity presents salvation from sin, 
atonement by Jesus Christ, regeneration by the Holy Ghost, and 
future rewardability on the basis of the temporal life, as the essen- 
tial elements of a better religion. Judaism and Mohammedanism 
announced that the world had a Creator and man a Law-giver; 
Christianity, reiterating these announcements, lifted up its voice and 
proclaimed a Savior. This is new ; this is the vital principle of 
Christianity. Superseding all other principles, it does not seem pos- 
sible that any other can ever supersede it, and, therefore, the re- 
ligion based upon it must be final. 

Furthermore, the settlement of the future of the divine religion 
is partly determined by the providential fact that the greatest truths 
of the historical religions find their counterparts in Christianity. It 
is not important to ascertain just how certain truths are common to 
all religions, nor how it happens that such truths, relieved of gross- 
ness and incapability, crystallize in strength and beauty in Chris- 
tianity. He who denies to Hindooism, either in its philosophic or 
religious utterance a trace of truth, needs the opening of his eyes, 
for, deficient both as philosophy and religion, it is neverthless the 
exponent of great religious ideas, and has wrought in man a hunger 
for things divine that must always precede their attainment. All the 
old religions excite an intolerable craving, but they do not satisfy it. 
Religions that have stood like great pillars supporting the ages must 
have in them some truths that Christianity can appropriate, or which 
are identical with the truths of the divine Teacher. The substance 
of what is good in them, the final elements of the old systems, may 
be transformed either into primary or final elements of the new re- 
ligion, and so will be preserved forever. The sovereignty of God, 
the authority of law, the reign of providence, the manifestations of 

47 



738 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the divine presence, all essential divine truths, must pass from the 
old into the new in order that the followers of the old may lose 
nothing essential in embracing the new. Many superstitions, many 
false interpretations of the facts of life, many vagaries in traditional 
forms, corrupted during the lapse of time, they will abandon ; but of 
the unity of God and of the facts of creation, providence, and gov- 
ernment, they will have all the brighter conception, since it is the 
province of the new to emphasize, illustrate, and enforce these ideas 
as it was impossible for the old to do. Christianity contains all the 
essential truths, the sovereign ideas, the vital teachings and principles 
of the ancient faiths, rescuing them from a barbarous environment, 
and assigning them their true position in the final system of relig- 
ious truth. 

This is not its greatest virtue, however ; for what better is it than 
they if it is only a conglomeration or reproduction of the old faiths? 
Christianity has its specialties, doctrines that separate it from all 
other, even the most kindred, faiths, and which declare it to be from 
God. That other religions in their primary elements resemble Chris- 
tianity, is a sufficient reason for their absorption by the latter ; that 
the latter is unlike any other in specific truths, is sufficient ground 
for its perpetuity. Many religions, animated by common sovereign 
principles, can not be as promotive of general righteousness as one 
religion, containing all the sovereignties, owing to the frictions and 
irritations which the many are likely to provoke, while the one can 
fight its way along a single line. Brahminism, Buddhism, Moham- 
medanism, Shintoism, and Taoism, are reproduced or preserved in 
their essentials in Christianity. The difference between them and the 
one religion standing out against them is that what is vital, supreme, 
essential in these Eastern faiths, must occupy a subordinate relation 
in the Christian faith, parting with their authority as religions, and 
sinking out of sight as divine systems. From supremacy to subordi- 
nation is a step down, but it has reference, not to annihilation, but 
solely to a change of position in the religious conflict. The truth of 
the old is a truth of the new, but with less influence in the latter 
than in the former. What is absolute in the old is relative in the 
new ; what is fundamental in the one, becomes auxiliary in the other. 
The ascendency of Christianity is the ascendency of its specialty, 
namely, the Incarnation, and the subordination of all other sovereign- 
ties in religion. 

Too much stress can not be laid upon the fact that Christianity is 
proving itself to be the final religious answer of God to man by its 
abundant and exhaustless revelations. It is a canon of faith that the 
inspired Scriptures are sufficient in themselves, as sources of truth, 



THE WHEEL WITHIN A WHEEL. 739 

and that new revelations are unnecessary and will never be made. 
This is not startling to those who reflect that the revelations already- 
given contain within themselves new and unknown, but not unknow- 
able, truths, to be gradually unfolded as man's spiritual preparation 
for their apprehension and use is completed. Inspired truth is a 
wheel within a wheel ; one revelation is a key to another revelation ; 
one truth is the vestibule to the palace of treasures. As, ascending 
the Rocky Mountains, the summit of one peak enables the traveler 
to discern still other peaks, higher and greater, that he did not recog- 
nize or anticipate from the valleys below, so, ascending the mount of 
revelation, one truth after another, not foreshadowed by any thing 
below, breaks upon the vision and enchants the beholder with its celes- 
tial charms, bidding him go forward forever. The human race has not 
gone up to the summits, but it is going. The great ranges of truth 
in the Scriptures but few men, explorers, the vanguard of a mighty 
host, have descried, ascended, and measured. Occasional flashes of 
light have suggested their existence, and the devout student has 
kindled into rapturous enthusiasm as he gazed upon the outlines ; but 
he hesitates to scale the dizzy heights, or waits until the divine Guide 
invites him upward. 

This view of Christianity has not received the attention it deserves, 
and really has encountered no little opposition from those who are 
the guardians of the oracles of God. Creed-makers, with fine and 
pious assumption, have hedged in what they declare to be the essen- 
tials of Christianity, and have been fierce in denunciation of those 
who saw a little beyond the hedge-line. More than once the charge 
of heresy has been nailed on the student's door ; and not infrequently 
the suspicion of moral dishonesty has been raised against one whose 
chief offense consisted in a purpose to find out the lurking-places of 
truth; and so investigation had been under ban, and freedom of 
thought a most perilous exercise. 

Our age is on the eve of a new departure in regard both to the 
importance of truth and the right of discovery, or of the use of that 
which may lead to the truth. Dissatisfaction with antiquated creed- 
forms has led to 'the suspicion that they do not accurately report 
Christianity, and that there is more in the supernatural revelations 
than has been imagined or declared, and hence inquiry without re- 
straint and without responsibility is legitimate, and to be encouraged. 
The disposition to break aw 7 ay from the discipline and leadership of 
the creed-monger does not imply a purpose to disown the verities of 
the new religion, but rather a purpose to find out what they are, and 
not to be satisfied until they can be defined and apprehended. We 
are on the borders of the new revelations of Christianity, revelations 



740 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

which shall dissociate truth from superstition, which shall harmonize 
truth with the philosophic idea of it, which shall envelop the pro- 
foundest mystery with a rational atmosphere, besides contributing to 
the theological repository of the Church new truths, which ages ago 
were not within the realm of speculation, but which the present age 
is intellectually and spiritually prepared to receive, and which are 
necessary to the harmonization of truth with itself. If our own age 
is unprepared for the reception of a broader and deeper revelation of 
truth, then the preparation will go on, age after age seeing a little 
farther into the mysteries of the supernatural, each finding what its 
predecessor never dreamed of, and conveying to its successor the new 
forces and the new inspirations which it has received. In all this 
development the spirit of Christianity will remain the same, for it is 
a development of form only. It is the struggle of Christianity, not 
only how best, but how fully to express itself. Reaching full de- 
velopment of form, in which its spirit will have the freest activity, 
Christianity will then appear to be the connecting link of the ages, 
from the sunrise in Eden to the days of the great and universal con- 
flagration, and the only truth from which all error has sprung, and 
to which all truth has returned. 

Christianity may safely depend upon its methods to secure its per- 
petuity, and to become the only, that is, the final, religion of man. 
Carnal weapons it does not seek or employ. By availing itself of 
the sword the Swiss reformation lost its glory, and Zwingli, its pro- 
moter, lost his life. Christianity, majestic and heroic under Constan- 
tine, compromised itself by association with the secular power, losing 
more than it gained, and almost lost its identity as a religion. Re- 
sults gained by such combinations are usually at the expense of relig- 
ion. To insure certain success, such as it prophesies of itself, the 
mode of conquest must be spiritual. To observation it may be slow, 
but it is solemnly providential, and will finally be irresistible. It 
wins, it does not force. 

In vindication of the proposition that Christianity will be the final 
religion no appeal has been made to the prophecies, which are all- 
assuring and all-enlightening on this subject, because our ground of 
faith is in Oiristianity itself. Some look to prophetic visions; we 
prefer to consult the truths of the religion, study their foundations, 
examine their adaptations, and then determine if the thought of a 
future triumph has a rational basis, if the truth itself foreshadows its 
universality. This method of determination is strictly philosophical. 
Prophecy begets songs, inspirations, gladness, faith; truth quickens 
thought, reveals knowledge, undergirds faith with reason, and gilds 
the future with the halo of millennial supremacy. 



ITS RELATION TO THE PRESENT AGE. 741 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

PRESENT TASKS OK CHRISTIANITY. 

THE Gospel of Christ is true; it therefore has something to do in 
this world. A true religion has a mission ; a mission without 
limitations, since truth is without bounds ; a mission that shall know 
no end, since truth will never cease, and will always be a necessity. 
The work of Christianity, except in its remote or purely incidental 
effects, is in no sense temporary; nor, as we have learned, is it con- 
fined to one age, or people, or country. It is the religion of the ages, 
the religion of all peoples, the religion of the globe. As algebra, 
chemistry, and geology are universal sciences, without national char- 
acteristics, so Christianity is the universal religion, without local or 
national peculiarities or elements. 

Nevertheless, its relation to the present age, and the special tasks 
imposed upon it as the result of this relation, are sufficiently impor- 
tant to justify special elaboration. In these days of intellectual in- 
quiry, of dissatisfaction with old forms of truth, and of agnostic 
tendency, and positive disquietude in the world's moral life, the reve- 
lations of Christianity need to be more distinctly emphasized, its as- 
surances more rationally reiterated, and its absolute verities more 
frequently demonstrated. The relation of religion to society, civiliza- 
tion, and government, its unavoidable conflicts with scientific pursuit 
and philosophic thought, and its acknowledged vitalizing tendencies 
in the realm of human activity and spiritual progress, require that it 
recognize existing conditions, present necessities, and the character 
and extent of current influences in the world's development. 

Its tasks are two-fold : (1) Tasks respecting itself ; (2) Tasks re- 
specting philosophy. 

In submitting the work the new Religion must do with respect to it- 
self, it may be suspected that the writer is under the influence of Chris, 
tianity, and therefore is blinded to its deficiencies, and disqualified to 
indicate the purification it needs, and the enlargement possible to it 
if redeemed from certain supposed errors and superstitions. It is 
true the spell of religion is upon us; but Plato was influenced by 
Socrates, Locke by Descartes, Hamilton by Reid and Kant, and Spen- 
cer by Hartley; we are influenced by Jesus Christ, and Paul, and 
John, and by Christianity as a whole, but are not ready to ac- 
knowledge any disqualification on this account. If we are settled in 



742 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

any special opinion, it is that which relates to the self-purification, 
enlargement, and future achievements of Christianity. We are in- 
terested in its future ; and, that it may not disappoint the ages, it is 
all-important that its present status be understood, that present duties 
be performed, and that its present hindrances be eliminated. 

The attitude of Christianity with respect to the present age must 
be one of deep, extensive, and penetrating observation. It must not close 
its eyes to modern life, or be deaf to the demands of this modern age. 
It must not take for granted that obstacles are retiring as it advances, 
and rest in the recognition of its own supernaturalism as the guarantee 
of its own safety. It must discover its enemies, observe their critical 
assaults on its foundations, familiarize itself with their plans and pur- 
poses, and study how to circumvent their schemes, answer their argu- 
ments, and repair their damages. In dealing with skepticism, three 
methods may be pursued : (a) Ignore it ; (6) Persecute it ; (c) Answer 
it. To ignore honest doubt, and to fail to enlighten it, is high treason 
against individual liberty, and is the sure way to strengthen such 
doubt. To ignore dishonest doubt is also one of the steps toward 
converting it into an honest suspicion of the truth. Ignoring doubt, 
honest or dishonest, it grew until it stalked into the presence of 
Christian thought a full-grown and formidable giant. 

In many instances, recognition of the skeptical tendency has been 
followed by artful persecution, or a spirit of intolerance guised in the 
form of truth has undertaken to demolish it. Departure from certain 
ecclesiastical standards of faith has been visited with excommunication 
and the threatened terrors of perdition. Independent thinkers, 
anxious to separate truth from error, have been characterized as 
blasphemers and heretics, and driven by ecclesiastical tormentors into 
positions they did not care to assume, and into final abandonment of 
what once they supposed was true. Intolerance of inquiry is always 
baneful, always prejudicial to the discovery of truth. 

The more excellent way is to ascertain what is going on in the 
world, what questions men are asking, what problems are agitating 
the thinkers, what amount of truth there is in agnosticism, what 
errors science claims to have discovered in the Gospels, what is the 
trouble with the world, and what is the trouble with Christianity. 
Recognition of doubts, inquiries, false reasonings, false sciences, false 
religions, and a willingness to hear all sides and patiently to consider 
all claims, must now and hereafter characterize the advocates of 
Christianity as the condition of its progress in the circles of those who 
philosophically reject it. It is because Christianity is true, that ive 
insist on the largest liberty of those who have rejected it to point out its want 
of internal veracity. 



A SYSTEM OF DEFENSE. 743 

There is no need that Christianity make special effort to save 
itself, but there is need that it explain and purify itself. Lamartine 
says, "God alone is strong enough against God." If Christianity is 
a divine religion, it can be overthrown only by divine means and 
divine agencies. Intrenched as it is, and supported by divine re- 
sources, nevertheless it needs defense, explanation, vindication. Its 
truths are peculiar and stand in peculiar relations to the world, and 
in order to be effectual in impressing the world, they must be pre- 
sented in a peculiar way, and as having peculiar authority and influ- 
ence. Many of its mysteries are impenetrable and jar on the reason ; 
they must be simplified, explained, and illuminated. Many of its 
truths require rationalistic support before they can be accepted, and 
many of the events recorded in the Gospels must stand the test of 
historical criticism before they can be regarded as real or true. The 
whole system of truth calls for a system of defense. 

This, however, does not imply that truth is in danger, or that its 
supporters must grow frantic or become fanatical in upholding it. 
The effort sometimes made to save God, or save the Bible, is useless. 
God is on the throne, and will maintain his sovereignty ; the Bible is 
a self-demonstrating revelation, and, differing from all other books in 
the inspirational origin of its contents, it will take care of itself. 
The defense of Christianity must lie along the track of its own truths. 
The best defense is to preach it ; the best answ r er to skepticism is to 
proclaim the truth. But preaching the truth implies a knowledge of 
the truth, and requires a careful study as to the best manner of pre- 
senting it. It is a philosophical Gospel ; it must at times be preached 
philosophically, that is, the philosophic base of truth must sometimes 
be exposed. It is an intuitional Gospel, that is, many of its truths 
harmonize with intuitional conclusions ; it must, therefore, be pro- 
claimed as an intuitional truth. It is a spiritual Gospel, that is, its 
highest truths are essentially supernatural, and accomplish their effects 
by supernatural means ; it must, therefore, be proclaimed as a religion 
from God. Its philosophy, its rationality, its spirituality, and its 
supernaturalism constitute it the religion that it is, and are the sources 
of its power, and so long as these features are exhibited and urged, 
it will stand, and overcome the oppositions brought against it. 

Ecclesiastical Christianity needs to save itself from some things 
that are essentially no part of original or Gospel Christianity, but which 
have gradually grown up with it, and sometimes have passed for the 
truth itself, to the great injury of true religion. Among the excres- 
cences or natural outgrowths of ecclesiasticism is cant, which, whether 
regarded in its aristocratic or vulgar sense, is a hindrance to the 
rapid progress of truth. Johnson says, " Clear your mind of cant." 



744 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

There is no book so absolutely exempt from the spirit of cant as the 
Bible, and no religion with less of it than Christianity. The cant of 
the Eastern or Oriental religions is their chief peculiarity, which may 
be accounted for from their want of truth. In the absence of truth, 
cant or superstition, or both, is likely to result. But a religion of 
truth is able both to discard superstition and suppress cant. Spiritual 
truth may be as positive in content, as free from superstitious forms, 
and as truly sincere and transparent in the expression of its aims 
and methods, as physical truth ; and both may be clear of all hypoc- 
risy and hollowness. The truth of the existence of God should not 
be molded into a cant-phrase any more than the law of gravitation. 
Regeneration is not a cant-word any more than light or heat. Of 
the words and phrases of the Bible we are not afraid or ashamed, 
for they express great realities, and are the very best for the revela- 
tion of such realities. They are inspired words, and, therefore, truth- 
words. In the selection of its words or terms for the expression of 
ideas, philosophy has been less fortunate, for it deals with abstractions, 
and uses words in any sense, if by so doing it believes it may reduce the 
abstract to a concrete conception. The word ' ' idea " is really a cant- 
word in philosophy, for it means one thing in Plato, another in 
Aristotle, another in Reid, another in Hamilton, and another in 
Cousin. It has no fixed or established meaning, and expresses an 
abstraction rather than a reality. This is the most refined kind of 
cant, of which philosophy furnishes abundant examples. Kant's 
"antinomies," in which stock words are used in a double sense, are 
the stately forms of philosophic cant. Except as its language is evi- 
dently figurative in meaning, the Bible declares its truths in simple 
speech, creating little confusion in the mind of the reader, and is so 
direct in its revelations that it is surprising that double or uncertain 
meanings have ever been inferred. In the use of such words as 
" world," " heaven," " hell," and " angel," a figurative meaning is some- 
times discoverable, but in no case is the truth which these words rep- 
resent compromised or invalidated. 

Cant is the joint product of abstraction, ambiguity, superstition, 
insincerity, and irrationality. It should have no place in religion, 
therefore ; but, unfortunately, there is a suspicion that Christianity is 
the religion of cant. This "cant" is of two kinds: (a) What the 
scientific world calls cant; (6) What the common world calls cant. 
The materialistic scientist pronounces such words as God, eternity, 
incarnation, atonement, justification, regeneration, faith, prayer, res- 
urrection, heaven, and hell as cant-words, representing imaginary 
ideas, or alleged facts that have no existence. It is easy to retort 
that such words as atoms, force, correlation, mechanism, matter, pro- 



RECONCILIATION OF ALLEGED CONTRADICTIONS. 745 

toplasm, law, order, cause, and effect are the cant-words of science, 
representing misconceptions, or the wildest fancies of the thinkers, 
and no more entitled to regard than the ideas of mythology. The 
word "atom" is far less intelligible than the word "creation;" the 
word "unknowable" far less satisfactory than the word "God;" the 
word "force" more inexpressive of a reality than "being." The 
terms of science are recondite, superficial, experimental, yet necessary 
and useful. The scientific charge of cant in religion rebounds with 
slaughtering effect on science. Both religion and science must have 
a nomenclature, a vocabulary, expressing truths, facts, laws, and 
principles peculiar to them, and the words of religion, expressing its 
realities, are not any more objectionable than the words of science, 
expressing its supposed facts. 

The common charge of cant in religion is one of the subterfuges 
of the race, a sign of indisposition to accept the truth. The average 
man does not rise to a proper conception of what religion is, either 
as a system of truth or as an experience of realities, and such words 
as repentance, faith, humility, forgiveness, and salvation sound to 
him like the phraseology of a new superstition, which, without exam- 
ination, he is inclined to reject. 

The Christian teacher must employ the terms of religion as the 
exponents of stupendous realities, thereby silencing the suspicion that 
they are empty forms of speech, and express only the excited senti- 
ments and convictions of the heart. 

It is incumbent on Christianity to reconcile its alleged contradictions 
and satisfy its respect for consistency. Truth is self-consistent; divine 
truth should be above all suspicion of internal contradiction. Con- 
sidering the range of Eevelation, the various modes in which truth 
has expressed itself, and the supernatural mysteries with which the 
Christian religion has loaded itself, it is not surprising that discussions 
with reference to the integrity of some of its truths have arisen, and 
that differences of opinion have been established. Because of mys- 
teries that have not been scientifically explained, they have been 
scientifically condemned ; and because of imperfect revelations, the 
whole has been charged with imperfection and insufficiency. In a 
general way, it is alleged against Revelation that it is faulty in its 
scientific reports and allusions, incorrect in its historical data and 
connections, unsound, and therefore unsafe, in its ethical teachings 
and examples, and so at variance with itself in the details of its sote- 
riological scheme that the claim of its inspiration is rendered worth- 
less. Rev. B. Heber Newton expresses the critical objection to the 
Old Testament in the following words: "The Old Testament histori- 
ans contradict each other in facts and figures, tell the same story in 



746 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

different ways, locate the same incident at different periods, ascribe 
the same deeds to different men, quote statistics which are plainly ex- 
aggerated, mistake poetic legend for sober prose, report the marvelous 
tales of tradition as literal history, and give us statements which can 
not be read as scientific facts without denying our latest and most 
authoritative knowledge." This broadside is a challenge to investiga- 
tion which the Christian thinker is bound to notice. Indifferent to 
the author of the above criticism, the criticism itself must be an- 
swered, or remain as a proof of the weakness of the so-called revela- 
tions of the Old Testament. 

What renders the allegation the more deserving of notice is that, 
without a thorough investigation of the historical contents of the 
Pentateuch in particular, the reader might be led to some of the rad- 
ical conclusions of Mr.. Newton ; in other words, the criticism is, in 
certain respects, apparently true. Not a few theologians have conceded 
an inaccuracy of statement in its scientific postulates, which has 
strengthened the suspicion that possibly its history is likewise inaccu- 
rate, and that, if the Book is infallible at all, it is only in its revela- 
tion of spiritual truths. But, if its science is a delusion and its his- 
tory is admitted to be false, the step to a denial of the truth of its 
spiritual revelations is a short one, and many will take it. Either 
the Book as a whole is true, or it is false. Its scientific truth must 
be as genuine and authoritative as its spiritual ; the first chapter of 
Genesis must stand or fall with the first chapter of the Gospel ac- 
cording to John ; the Flood and the Besurrection, Babel and Pente- 
cost, the Fall of Man and the Atonement of Jesus Christ, must be 
believed or rejected ; the one class of truths stand or fall with the 
other class of truths. The science, the history, and the inspiration 
and revelation of the spiritual truths of the Bible, can not be sepa- 
rated, the one being pronounced fallible and the other infallible. 

No more troublous problem has arisen in these days in connection 
with Biblical interpretation than that which the authorship of the 
Pentateuch has provoked. A majority of theologians and Biblical 
scholars hold with unquestioning faith to the long-accepted view that 
Moses wrote the five books bearing his name ; but schools within as 
well as without the Christian Church have assailed this view with no 
little vehemence, and propounded disturbing questions to the other 
side. Within the Church such writers as Dr. G. T. Ladd, of Yale Col- 
lege, and Prof. C. A. Briggs, of Union Theological Seminary, have 
seriously questioned the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and 
have compelled a reinvestigation of the proofs. Prof. Briggs holds 
that the Pentateuch is the product of four different writers ; that it is 
somewhat legendary in its details, and without the supernatural 



THE FIRES OF INVESTIGATION. 747 

authority usually attributed to it. Robertson Smith, of Scotland, grants 
that Moses wrote the Ten Commandments, but is uncertain that he 
wrote more of the Pentateuch. Prof. Ladd, advancing a theory of 
inspiration, which excludes a portion of the Bible as inspired, denies 
to Moses the authorship of much of the Pentateuch. Thus a direct 
attack on the doctrine of inspiration itself is made within the Church, 
the motive being, without doubt, the purification of human views of 
truth, and the destruction of errors and superstitions which age has 
made sacred and piety beautiful. Here, then, are grave problems 
for the Christian critic and thinker to study; problems that can not 
be solved by raising the cry of heresy against those who propose them, 
or by the expulsion from his chair of a professor striving to solve 
them, or by quietly forgetting that they are related to progress and 
to the future. Truth is the end of all seeking. The Bible, as the 
book of truth, can stand (he fires of investigation; let them burn. 

Inasmuch as the scientific and historic accuracy of the Bible is in 
question, and the authorship of several Old Testament books is in dis- 
pute, the task of explanation, defense, and settlement of these ques- 
tions must be undertaken by the Christian thinker with the same en- 
thusiasm which govern the so-called errorists, and be prosecuted until 
it shall be finished. 

If Christianity is proclaimed as a religion, standing beside other 
religions, and taking its chances with them, it is likely to succeed, 
even if the doctrine of its inspiration must be abandoned ; but if it is 
proclaimed as a divine religion, superior to all others, and intended to 
extinguish all others, then the question of its inspiration is para- 
mount, and alleged contradictions and inconsistencies must be ex- 
plained and reconciled. 

The concession of historic and scientific errors in the Bible must 
be withdrawn, but in withdrawing it the supposed errors must be 
shown to be distortions of the truth, or to have arisen in a way that 
does not compromise the integrity of the documents containing them. It 
must not be forgotten that the original manuscripts of the sacred writers 
are not before us ; we read copies, or translations of copies, the infal- 
libility of which no one is justified in asserting. Errors of transla- 
tion, difficult to detect and equally difficult to correct, have rendered 
ambiguous or uncertain some paragraphs or chapters of the Book, 
but these are not numerous, and do not affect or change the accepted 
meaning of Revelation. It must be remembered also that the orig- 
inal languages of the Bible were ancient and Oriental, differing in 
idioms, grammatical construction, and provincial character from mod- 
ern languages, and especially from the Anglo-Saxon or English 
tongue. Employing the Hebrew and Greek in their purely native 



748 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

sense, it frequently happens that the sacred writers have contradicted 
the Occidental conception of things, and the modern notions of truth. 
To understand the Bible, therefore, it is necessary to understand the 
languages in which it was written. 

Nor must it escape attention that the customs and manners of the 
Bible-making period were exclusively Oriental, a knowledge of which 
is absolutely necessary to a correct interpretation of the Bible. In 
their salutations and ordinary speech, in their dress and occupations, in 
their etiquette and domestic customs, in their social ideas and habits, 
the Oriental nations differed, as they do to-day, from European na- 
tions, the Bible writers recognizing the Oriental customs, and not in- 
frequently presenting the truth in an Oriental frame-work. So far as 
it is an Oriental book, it can be understood only as Oriental ideas are 
understood. 

As a matter of fact, the Bible is better understood to-day, in the 
light of archaeology, geography, and Orientalisms, than at any period 
of Biblical study and investigation. As an instance of progress, con- 
sider that until recently the subject of the antiquity of man has per- 
plexed both evolutionist and theologian, the former having been 
anxious to establish a long antiquity, while the theologian was equally 
anxious to cut it down to sixty centuries. Geology, at first wild and 
eccentric, has under discipline become sober and iiaquisitive, and 
practically settled the dispute in favor of the theologian. Dr. South- 
all concludes that man's first appearance on the earth was about 6,600 
years ago ; Principal Dawson dates the appearance from 6,000 to 
8,000 years ago ; and the Septuagint version of the Scriptures places 
it 7,290 years ago. As another instance, consider that recent inves- 
tigation of monuments in Syria, Egypt, and Mesopotamia has dem- 
onstrated the truthfulness of the Biblical account of the dispersion of 
the races from the plains of Shinar at the time and in the manner 
indicated. One more instance : Infidel scholarship has regarded Ur 
of the Chaldees a mythological city, but the modern geographer has 
identified its site on the river Euphrates, and thus supplied a miss- 
ing link in the biography of Abraham. If, then, geography, archae- 
ology, and the monumental and geological records are establishing 
questionable facts, or solving the enigmas of the Bible, is it unreason- 
able to infer that whatever is still in dispute may finally be sustained 
or disposed of in the same scientific and philosophic way ? One thing 
is certain, and that is that scientific research, when completed along a 
given line, has in not a single instance overturned or even shaken the Bib- 
lical account, but, on the other hand, it has triumphantly vindicated and 
explained it. The conclusion is that the so-called scientific errors of 
the Bible are errors of interpretation, errors of ignorance, errors of lim- 



THE WORK OF THE CREED-BUILDER. 749 

ited investigation, and not errors of fact. The duty of the Christian 
thinker to submit the science of the Bible to scientific research, and 
the history of the Bible to historical tests, is plain enough. In this 
way its scientific and historic character will be established. 

One of the chief duties of Christianity is to define itself with greater 
perspicuity and simplicity. A transparent definition, not of dogma, 
nor yet of single truths, but of Christianity as one truth, is a demand 
that must be met if the public mind shall be relieved of confusion 
and embarrassment. In the absence of such a definition the misun- 
derstanding of what Christianity is or proposes to do has been fruit- 
ful of strife, of wasteful expenditure of energy in behalf of creeds, 
and of serious resistance on the part of many to the just claims of 
religion. Taking advantage of the misunderstanding, the creed-builder 
went to work rearing an architectural frame in which the simplicities 
of the Gospel have occupied an obscure place. The Athanasian creed 
is a wonderful structure, a fine specimen of theologic architecture, 
but has it saved the world from death, or is it what the world needs? 
The imposition of creed-forms of truth, the penalties inflicted upon 
those who could not philosophically accept them, the dissensions of 
ecclesiastical bodies over them, and the trail of the heresy-hunter in 
the Christian circles of thought, have been a disgrace to Christendom, 
an obstacle to religious progress, and an unpardonable stain on the 
pages of human history. As Home spent more time in conquering a 
province in Italy than was necessary after she controlled the Med- 
iterranean to subdue the whole earth, so the Christian Church has 
consumed the ages in the defense of peccadilloes of expression, when 
long ere this day she might have conquered the world. 

It is not against a creed per se that we are writing, for a formu- 
lated article of faith, embracing the fundamental truths of Christian- 
ity, is proper enough. As in mathematics, certain axioms are neces- 
sary ; as in chemistry, certain laws must be accepted ; as in physiology, 
the existence of certain organs and functions must be recognized, so 
Christianity may be represented by certain truths, which, taken to- 
gether, constitute the creed or the axioms of religion. It makes not 
against this position to affirm that no specific creed or articles of 
faith are recorded in the New Testament, for faith in the Lord Jesus 
Christ is required as the condition of salvation ; and faith in Christ 
includes all the truths of Christ, or Christianity. The objection to 
the creed is its elaboration of details, and its attempt to reduce 
religion, in all of its peculiarities and mysteries, to formal state- 
ment, belief in which is regarded necessary to admission in the Chris- 
tian Church, and to the benefits of the atonement of the Son of 
God. By so much as it elaborates beyond essential truths, the creed 



750 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

becomes a burden to faith and a stumbling-block to inquiring souls. 
Real faith acts intuitionally. It sees the truth in a moment ; it 
needs no architectural or Gothic form. Give it the truth, not as an 
ideality, or a fiction, or an abstraction, or as a dogmatic affirmation, 
but as a reality, and in the simplest form, and the mind will harmo- 
nize with it. In religion, as in science, the fundamentals are the 
simplicities. We do not deny complexity to religion ; its truths reach 
into the eternities ; but man may spare himself the trouble of going 
so far for his knowledge Of saving truth. The undertaking to define 
the details of all mysteries, or to project a Scheme of Faith which 
should include revealed and unrevealed truth, instead of defining 
Christianity as the supernatural instrument of the world's salvation, 
has been productive of serious misapprehension and not a little intel- 
lectual perplexity. The w T orld must first be taught what Christianity 
is not before it will truly apprehend what Christianity is; that is, 
there is quite as much to unlearn as there is to learn. Men must 
learn that Christianity is not a system of sacraments, or a theory of 
the priesthood, or a set of dogmas, or a series of ethical truths, or the 
constitution of ecclesiastical bodies ; but that while sacraments, priest- 
hoods, dogmas, truths, and laws are in some sense the products of re- 
ligion, they do not constitute the essential ideas of Christianity. 
On its negative side Christianity is complex ; on its affirmative side, 
simple. The affirmations of religion, the yeas of divine truth, are in 
demand, and must be given to the w T orld. 

In the same spirit Christianity needs explicitly to set forth its purpose 
in the world, to characterize its mission in such terms that organized 
resistance will diminish, and a glad welcome be accorded it. Its mis- 
sion is three-fold : (a) Moral ; (b) Philanthropic ; (c) Spiritual. Its 
moral purpose appears in the re-enacted Decalogue, and in the ethics 
of the New Testament. Unobjectionable as is the moral code of the 
new religion, and elevating and restraining as is its moral spirit, it 
meets intellectual criticism on the one hand and practical rebellion on 
the other. Its injunction of self-denial is interpreted as ascetic; its 
virtues are alleged to be borrowed from the pagans ; its inelastic re- 
quirements are considered too ideal for practical life. Civil govern- 
ments enact laws, violate treaties, and engage in war, in violation of 
the principles of equity, as taught in the New Testament ; while in- 
dividuals commit crime and trifle with right as if moral laws were not 
in operation. This condition of things Christianity proposes to rem- 
edy by the incorporation of moral principles in the constitutions of 
governments, and into the beliefs, habits, and activities of individuals 
and communities, guaranteeing the sovereignty of man and the reign 
of the moral idea in this world. To magnify the ethical principle, 



THE SPIRITUALITIES OF THE GOSPEL. 751 

and insist upon conformity to it, is one of the first duties of the Chris- 
tian worker. 

The philanthropic purpose of Christianity is sufficiently misunder- 
stood to provoke opposition and excite depreciation, yet is it the 
beautiful exponent of the graciousness of the divine scheme. Our 
religion looks with sympathetic yearning upon the degradation, igno- 
rance, and wretchedness of the human race, and comes with pitying 
eye to relieve, and with open hand to help and rescue. It comes 
not with the sword, but with balm for wounds already made ; it 
comes not as a tyrant to crush out the remaining life, but as a Sa- 
maritan, with oil and money to assist the unfortunate world ; it comes 
all-benevolent in spirit, pointing to schools, asylums, homes, churches, 
and is anxious to lift up the fallen and make glad the whole earth. 
To such a mission what objection can be raised? The skeptical pro- 
nounce its benevolence the outcropping of ecclesiastical selfishness, 
and its works the fruit of a culpable sectarianism ! This is proof 
that the philanthropies of the Gospel are misunderstood, and that the 
only cure for such misunderstandings is the wide-spread sway of the 
Gospel. 

The spiritual purpose of Christianity is its highest purpose. It pro- 
poses to deliver men from the thralldom of sin, to make them saints, 
to equip them with immortal functions, to make them messengers of 
light and children of God. Such a purpose no other religion em- 
bodies in its teachings or efforts; it belongs exclusively to Christian- 
ity. To the spiritualities of the Gospel, the most important of all, 
the most formidable objections have been raised. To the moralities 
and philanthropies of the Gospel the opposition will be easily over- 
come ; but the triumph of the spiritualities implies and will require 
patience, discipline, culture, intellectual purification, enlargement of 
moral capacity, and the intensification of the moral pursuits of life. 
The first need of man is spirituality. Given the spiritualities, and 
the moralities and philanthropies bloom ; given the latter, and it is 
not certain that the former will flourish. The divine order of devel- 
opment is, first, spirituality, then morality and philanthropy; the 
world's attempted order is the reverse ; hence, the failure. The true 
order of development, or the three-fold mission of Christianity to 
the human race must be explicitly stated and enforced as the condi- 
tion of moral and spiritual progress ; otherwise morality will be sci- 
entific instead of spiritual, and philanthropy will be philosophical 
instead of divine, or morality and philanthropy w T ill be divorced from 
religion, with no power except that derived from their own mechanical 
working, and with no assurance of triumph except that which the 
general law of evolution will inspire. 



752 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

While it is the duty of Christianity to take care of itself, correct 
its weaknesses, repair its infirmities, and eliminate its inadequacies, 
it must not forget its relations to philosophic thought, and that the task 
growing out of such relation is one of magnitude, and should receive 
immediate attention. The adjustment of the differences between 
Christian thought on the one hand and the philosophic pursuit on 
the other, is so necessary to the purity of the one and the freedom 
of the other, that its postponement can only result in widening the 
breach and possibly effect a permanent alienation. From the stand- 
point of Christianity, certain views have been entertained which, 
however justifiable in spirit, may, in their practical workings, have 
impeded the work of reconciliation. It has been supposed that the 
scientific thinker will finally discover the harmony of the facts of 
nature with the truths of religion, and that this discovery will open 
the way to agreement and unity without any special negotiation be- 
tween the parties concerned. In a sense this is true, and doubtless 
reconciliation will finally be forced by the logic of events, or the self- 
evident harmony of all kinds of truth. Truth is a unit, however 
many-sided it is, and it will agree with itself. In mathematics there 
is no conflict among the squares, triangles, and circles ; without them 
mathematics is impossible; yet there is no apparent likeness or kin- 
ship among them. Nor can there be any conflict among forces, laws, 
causes, doctrines, cosmogonies, miracles, prophecies, and spiritual 
facts when fully apprehended, for, different in form, presentation, and 
use, they are not antagonistic, but are essential to a religion that pro- 
fesses to emanate from God, and comprehend the universe of thought 
and being. That there is seeming conflict now is no evidence of an 
inner irreconcilability ; it is proof of the perversion of truth so far 
as discovered, or of ignorance of truth yet to be known. If owing 
entirely to the latter, the future will take care of it and secure the 
harmony needed, for an increased knowledge of truth will certainly 
result from additional investigations, and remove grounds of differ- 
ence. If, however, the antagonism is owing to any degree to a dis- 
torted view, or a perverted use, of truth, then the duty of a re-exami- 
nation of our knowledge and of the ends to which it is applied, and 
the motives that have governed in the use of it is imperative, or 
truth itself must for a time suffer. Prejudices, distortions, rebuffs, 
imperfections, and hypocrisies have without doubt interfered with an 
honest adjustment of the antagonism between the religious and intel- 
lectual forces, but the time has come for a close and fearless attempt 
at reconciliation. 

Perhaps it is not too much to say that Christianity, conscious of 
its strength, or at least satisfied that it can not be overthrown, has 



THE CENTRAL POSITION IMPREGNABLE. 753 

been too indifferent to the nature of the attacks made upon it, and 
to the motives that have impelled agnosticism and materialism to join 
their forces against it. Surely it is time that Christian thought should 
recognize the animus of the opposition and strive to overcome it. 

Again, it is assumed in certain Christian circles that philosophic 
thought, goaded into a false attitude by the scientific thinker, is re- 
sponsible for the antagonism now existing between itself aud revealed 
truth, and that it must work out the problem of reconciliation. As 
a historical fact this will not be disputed, but it is a question if 
philosophic thought, however honest in its purpose, can, unaided by 
inspired truth, solve the difficulty and bring itself into right rela- 
tions with such truth. The task is a great one, too great, we fear, 
for philosophy. It is asking the lower to put itself in right relations 
with the higher, when perhaps the higher ought to put itself in right 
relations ivith the loiver. The stars can not adjust their relations to 
the sun, but the sun may establish relations with the stars. Left to 
itself, philosophy runs into pessimism, atheism, materialism, and ag- 
nosticism ; what hope is there that, unaided by divine truth, it will 
some time grasp the theistic conception in its wholeness, and embrace 
Christianity as the final utterance of God? In this dilemma the 
Christian thinker can not haughtily refuse to consider methods of 
reconciliation or initiate the steps to be taken in order to secure it. 
His supreme duty is to advance toward philosophic error, not as a 
Caesar to strike it, nor with the threat of penalty if an immediate 
surrender is not made, but in the spirit of a counselor, setting forth 
the truth in its brightest colors, and quietly shaming error out of ex- 
istence. The cure for materialism is the intellectual and spiritual 
truth of Christianity ; properly applied it will not fail. Philosophy 
can not harmonize itself with revealed truth ; Christianity, under- 
taking the task of harmonization, can affect it. Instead of placing 
the burden of reconciliation upon incompetent philosophic thought, 
let Christianity boldly assume it and proceed to discharge the duty 
required. Herbert Spencer concedes that the "central position" of 
religion " is impregnable," meaning that certain central facts or teach- 
ings addressed to the conscience, the intuitions, and the reason will 
be recognized as authoritative, and homage and obedience must fol- 
low. In a larger sense we may affirm that, in its central position, in 
its fundamental truths, Christianity is absolutely invulnerable, and is 
demonstrating its stability of character and permanence of conquest 
by its progressive history and its efficient every-day work in human 
life. If religion is impregnable, if its truths can not be overthrown, 
instead of relapsing into a quietistic state, content with the belief 
that it will finally subdue all things to itself, it should be intensely 

48 



754 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

active in the work of illumination, and ceaselessly aggressive against 
sin, that the holy and universal triumph may be all the sooner 
achieved. 

The Christian thinker has delayed the inauguration of an aggress- 
ive campaign against the materialistic metaphysician because of a 
fancy that science and philosophy, by their interminable quarrels, 
will possibly destroy each other, or end the strife by a willing surren- 
der to Christianity. It is well known that the scientific theorists of 
the age are quite put out with one another, and that they differ 
among themselves touching the great questions quite as much as they 
differ with the theologians. As regards the age of the world, the 
nature of light, the origin of matter, the essence of mind, and the 
cause of things, a discordant cry comes from laboratory, hall, grove, 
and the study. St. George Mivart and Darwin can not agree ; Huxley 
and Tyndall dispute ; the evolutionists are at war among themselves; 
Hackel is frantic ; English thinkers tremble as they discover the 
foundations of morality quaking under the fearful tread of material- 
ists; John Fiske, disciple of Darwin, at last pronounces in favor of a 
personal God ; and the whole brotherhood of scientists and philoso- 
phers are disturbed, divided, and ensnared in their own dilemmas. 
Confusion is on the increase in the circles of the materialists, atom- 
ists, sensationalists, atheists, psychologists, and pessimists. Greedy in 
their love of facts, they hoped to be justified by facts in turning 
Christianity out of doors and banishing God from the universe ; but 
the facts have well-nigh expelled the metaphysicians. The furnace 
was intended to destroy Daniel, but it burned his persecutors ; the gal- 
lows was built for Mordecai, but Haman hung therefrom. However, 
it will not do to trust entirely to the reactionary result of discovered 
facts, or to the confusion and division among the fact-seekers, for a 
final vindication of revealed truth. The truth itself must be intro- 
duced into the conflict, dividing the scientists more and more, and 
troubling them as mere theories have never troubled them. Hitherto, 
the bone of contention has been theory; hereafter, let it be truth. 

Just what we mean by reconciliation may be readily inferred from 
the general discussion in preceding pages of the standing differences 
between Christianity and philosophy. They are not at one touching 
central or fundamental truths, such as the existence of God, the 
Mosaic account of creation, the inspiration of the Bible, the origin 
of man, the origin or introduction of evil, the possibility of miracles, 
the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of atonement, the sig- 
nificance of regeneration, the immortality of the soul, and all other 
vital teachings of religion ; and so long as they are at variance, the 
one holding them as speculations or superstitions, and the other as 



THE STAGES OF CONFLICT. 755 

revealed truths, there will be conflict, there will be confusion of judg- 
ment, there will be loss of souls. As to how these primary truths 
shall be defended and taught we have indicated elsewhere, but we 
may here point out the stages of the conflict, or the work that must 
be performed before reconciliation shall have been fully established. 
The stages of the conflict are three: (a.) Positive Antagonism; 
(b.) Transition Period ; (c.) Eeconciliation. Of antagonism the world 
has had enough ; philosophy can not desire more ; Christianity has had 
all that is necessary. In many quarters the antagonism is still going 
on; the battle rages ; the smoke rises; banners fly or fall; the slain, 
alas ! are many. But the antagonistic age is nearly ended ; the spirit 
of virulence has almost spent its force ; a calmness of inquiry is on 
the face of the thinker; and prejudice is dying amid its worshipers. 

That we are in the transition period, emerging into better con- 
ditions and into final settlements of differences, let us fondly hope. 
Philosophy is less presumptuous in spirit ; evolution in its early sci- 
entific form is waning ; materialism is losing its grip on faith and 
thought ; the Absolute has appeared ; the face of God shines through 
the storm ; and the thick-armored hosts of force have halted and can 
not advance. 

The next step is reconciliation, which will be not complete touch- 
ing details at first, but gradual, certain, satisfactory, embracing all 
things at last. When philosophy prostrates itself before God, the 
battle is won, and won forever. The idea of God once accepted 
will make room for every other Christian idea in the realm of philo- 
sophic thinking, and sway the nations as completely as does the sun 
the planets. 

In its relations with philosophy Christianity must not forget to 
respect the rationalistic 'principle in man. It often appeals to the af- 
fectional nature, since its own spirit is affection al, but the rational 
principle is vital and to a degree sovereign in the life of man. So 
imperious is it that it compels him to reject what it condemns, and 
to receive what it approves, becoming the criterion of truth and the 
arbiter in all disputes between truth and error. Nor is this preroga- 
tive of the reason a mere conceit or presumption ; it is its endowment 
or function which is intended to protect the truth from fanaticism, 
superstition, and radicalism. It is not assumed that religion violates 
the reason, or that revelation is irrational in content or purpose ; but 
a misunderstanding of the function of reason on the part of religion, 
and an alleged irrationality in the truths of religion on the part of 
reason, have produced painful and unnecessary conflicts, without any 
special compensations, or advantage to the truth. The rational 
power of man must be understood, and the rationality of revelation 



756 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

must also be apprehended. Human reason is not always the sole 
umpire in the settlement of differences between religious truth and 
error, but in many cases its final decision is authoritative, and must 
be respected. The rational side of Christianity must be submitted to 
the rationalistic principle of the thinker in order to obtain a rational 
judgment in its favor. Channing says, "Christianity is a rational 
religion." The theologian has said it is a mysterious religion; a 
supernatural religion ; a miracle-sustained religion ; a prophetic re- 
ligion ; a redemptive religion ; all of which is true, and, being 
true, it has appealed with force to faith, love, fear, instinct, de- 
sire, and self-interest in the awakening of men to spiritual thought 
and activity. We do not question the sincerity or sufficiency of mo- 
tives to activity that take their rise in the affection al or emotional 
nature, but contend for a place for the exercise of reason in the 
spiritual life. The rationality of Gospel truth ; of supernaturalism 
as an idea ; of miracle as a metaphysical possibility ; of regeneration 
as a philosophical process ; of immortality as a scientific result, can 
be made to appear, along with the usual theological defenses of the 
same. The doctrines of Christianity are as rational as the laws of 
the natural world, to be studied from the same stand-point, and to be 
accepted with as little hesitation or misgiving of faith. Christian 
teachers must present religion to men as the most rational idea in the regions 
of human thought. It is not necessary to make it irrational in order to 
prove it supernatural, or show that it is so mysterious that it can not 
be understood in order to impress men that it is divine. Its super- 
naturalism lies along the track of tJie highest and purest reason. A pres- 
entation of revealed truth as supremely logical in itself will destroy 
the challenge of infidelity, which heretofore has invoked the aid of 
reason in its defense as against the supposed irrational dogmatics of 
religion. In this w 7 ay also the sympathy of all truth-seekers with 
revealed religion will be secured, for, posing as a rational religion, 
they can not consistently oppose it until, having examined it, they 
shall find that it is not the truth ; but investigation by rational meth- 
ods will result in a rational judgment in its behalf. 

This is what we mean when we insist that Christianity shall re- 
spect the rationalistic principle, or that it shall appeal to the reason ; 
we mean an appeal to the methods of reason for the ascertainment of 
truth. Reason, disciplined and schooled to close work, usually resorts 
to one or all of three methods of expression in the execution of its 
tasks : (a) The a priori method, or reasoning from cause to effect — a 
mode of reasoning legitimate, forcible, and within limitations suffi- 
cient; (6) The a posteriori method, or reasoning from effect to cause — 
a mode of reasoning regarded even stronger than the preceding ; 



METHODS OF REASON APPLIED TO CHRISTIANITY. 757 

(c) Reasoning from analogy, or the discovery of the bearing of phys- 
ical truth upon religious truth. With these instruments at hand the 
reason works vigorously on its great problems in the lower realm, 
often discovering physical truth and proclaiming it, not in mere 
joyousness of words, but with all logical assurance, and is satisfied. 

To change the phrases, the reason works according to the inductive 
method, or the method of physical science, reasoning from parts to 
the whole, from particulars to generals. Bacon introduced the in- 
ductive method into modern science, and employed it as an all-suffi- 
cient method in his realm of investigation. The method of deduction, 
or the going from generals to particulars, is considered a safer be- 
cause it is a larger and more self-evidencing method than the former ; 
yet the two taken together constitute the final forms of rationalistic 
expression. 

Without question Christianity should appeal to these various 
methods of logical inquiry for the vindication of its truths. As a 
religion of truth it should not shrink from the methods of truth, but 
appropriate them as the methods by which it shall be communicated 
to ihe minds of men. As to the monotheistic conception, inasmuch 
as it is a doctrine of revelation, the a priori method will support it, 
and when it can be assumed as an a priori fact, all the other 
truths of religion can be assumed, and will be received. The 
apriorism of Christianity needs to be enforced with the command- 
ing assurance that a priori truth inspires. In the hands of the 
theologian the monotheistic idea has been ably vindicated by the 
a posteriori method ; but as philosophic thought has sometimes ques- 
tioned the adequacy of the method, the other may as surely be em- 
ployed in defense of the same truth. To be sure, not all of the 
truths of Christianity can be as clearly demonstrated by one method 
as by the other, but there is no revealed truth that will not yield to one of the 
methods of the reason. If the a priori or the a posteriori method fail, 
or the thinker fail in using them, then, like Joseph Butler, he may resort 
to the analogical method, and be sure of some kind of discovery. All 
that the reason can legitimately ask is that its methods have recogni- 
tion in the investigation of revealed truth, and the least that Chris- 
tianity can do is to grant the request. 

Within recent years Christianity has submitted itself to the lim- 
ited methods of rational investigation, and with advantage to itself. The 
world begins to recognize that it is a scientific as well as spiritual re- 
ligion, a philosophical as well as supernatural revelation of truth ; it 
finds that it is as rational as it claims to be, and deserves intellectual 
homage as well as the veneration of faith. 

It belongs to Christianity to urge and encourage both science and 



758 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

philosophy to push on in their ivork of investigation, that final results 
may be established. Hitherto there has not been, from the Christian 
thinker, the warmest welcome for the discoveries of science or the 
honest conclusions of the philosophic inquirer; on the contrary, a 
spirit of hostility has too frequently been manifested toward those who 
were toiling in the lower realm of matter, and were anxious to ascer- 
tain its laws and contents. The most expeditious way to reach final- 
ities is to press on through the thick darkness toward them. There 
must not be imposition, or hypocrisy, or presumption in science, any' 
more than in religion. The task of finding truth is a serious one, 
and the methods adopted must be sober, and the results announced 
must be genuine. The cure for agnosticism, materialism, and pessi- 
mism is partly to compel the investigator to go on in his searchings, 
denying him rest until his work is completed. The danger to truth is 
in unfinished investigation of it. From the constitution of things there 
is evidently a limit to the physical universe, which when found will 
distrain the thinker from further inquiry. Spatial and temporal con- 
ditions environ it; its history is the history of change; and limitation 
is the law of its existence. Predicating density, weight, color, utility, 
and relation of things, is the same as predicating limitation, for these 
are the terms of limitation. In like manner, physical forces, laws, 
orders, processes, and agencies operate within conceivable, if not 
within defined, limits, the searching of which is incumbent upon the 
philosopher. We may spur the philosopher on, we may shout him to 
his work. To the limits! To the limits! Go on, friend, until you 
can go no farther. What then? From the "limit" to the "limit- 
less" is but a single step, which the thinker will then eagerly take; 
his difficulties will then be solved in the full revelation of truth ; and 
at last, with all doubts removed, all fears quenched, and all aspira- 
tions satisfied, he will rejoice in the abundant visions of God. To 
this consummation Christianity may contribute not a little by its 
quickening and encouraging influence on the minds of the thinkers 
of the race. 

Especially is it the duty of Christianity to remember that, as it is 
adapted to all ages of the world, it has special adaptation to the nine- 
teenth century, or the times in which we live, and should therefore 
employ its resources and agencies to the utmost in the spiritual cul- 
ture and elevation of the world of to-day. In its ethical teachings, as 
well as in its spiritual ministrations, and in its philanthropic spirit as 
in its redemptive purpose, it is the religion the humanity of our times 
needs. Without it our governments become corrupt, the family in- 
stitution disorganizes, social life falls to a vicious level, and divine 
ideals are forgotten. It is a developing religion, 'developing the people 



THE ETERNAL ESSENCE OF TRUTH. 759 

who receive it, and developing itself into a richer form as they receive 
it. It is the priceless heritage of the nineteenth century, let it not 
be trodden under foot; it is the light of the world, let it not be ex- 
tinguished ; it is the truth of God, let it not be buried or forgotten. 
Christianity is Truth. Of all sacred or religious teachers, Christ 
ivas exceptional in this tJiat he was not a truth-seeker; he sought it not, because 
he was the truth. The stars may seek the light, the sun only shines. 
Christ is truth ; he is philosophic and theologic truth; he is natural and 
supernatural truth; he is ethical and eschatological truth; he is govern- 
mental and aesthetic truth; he is personal and impersonal truth; he is 
rational and spiritual truth ; he is final and absolute truth ; he is 

VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE TRUTH ; he is JUST AND HOLY TRUTH ; he IS 
KNOWN AND UNKNOWN TRUTH; he is CREATIVE AND UNCREATED 

truth; he is the Alpha and Omega of truth; he is the strength and 
illumination of truth; he is the crown and glory of truth; he is the im- 
mutability, the omnipresence, the everlasting goodness, and the eternal 

ESSENCE OF TRUTH. 

Christianity is Truth. Its mission is the propagation of truth, its 
inspiration is the inspiration of truth, its success is the success of 
truth. Let error tear down, the truth must build up ; let the one 
agnosticize the world, the other must illuminate it; let the one ma- 
terialize the thought of men, the other must spiritualize it; let the 
one drive the race into Plato's cave, the other must draw all men into 
Christ's kingdom ; let the one actualize an anarchy of letters, the 
other must establish a republic of immortal truths. 

Christianity is Truth. Nature is at one with its solemn proclama- 
tions, and in its development is a re-assertion of all that religion un- 
folds or enforces. Every spiritual truth has a physical basis, and 
every physical truth has a spiritual basis. The natural is the spiritual, 
the spiritual is the natural. The universe of non-being is the adver- 
tisement of the universe of being. Nature, with its myriad voices of 
power, wisdom, and goodness, stands for God, and for all that Chris- 
tianity is, or is doing in the world. History, too, is the mirror of 
the ideal purposes of religion, the panorama-like representation of di- 
vine ends in process of fulfillment. Nations, governments, and civ- 
ilizations are the concrete forms of divine ideals, imperfectly wrought 
out, but speaking loudly in their imperfection of the divine move- 
ments among men. Man himself is the sublimest proof of Christian- 
ity. He distances every opposing argument, and silences every 
skeptical suggestion. He is truth incarnate. He is immortality on 
foot ; he is God in human form. Christianity is truth ; the truth of 
nature, the truth of history, the truth of humanity, the truth of the 

EVERLASTING GOD. 



760 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Christianity is Truth. Assailed it will be, but its defenders need 
not be afraid ; misrepresented it will be, but believers need not be 
alarmed; struggles with error it will have, but its friends need not 
sink into despair. "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me." The 
hope of victory is engraved on the brow of truth ; the strength of 
victory is in the sword of truth ; the pledge of victory is from Him 
who is the author of truth. Sooner will the firmament fall than one 
jot or tittle of divine truth fail in its appointed task, or become weary 
with its solemn work. Victory! The earth will sound it; the 
heavens will echo it; man will sing it; eternity will celebrate it. 
Victory ! This is the end of truth. 

Christianity is Truth. So the patriarchs believed ; so the law-givers 
declared ; so the prophets foretold ; so the apostles proclaimed ; so 
the martyrs assumed; so the sons of God everywhere have affirmed. 

Truth ! Let the poets recognize its eternal beauty ; let the his- 
torians record its stately marches to conquest ; let the rulers remem- 
ber Him who judgeth the nations according to its holy and unim- 
peachable standards; let the scientists toil in its sunlight, and rejoice 
in its abundant and ever-increasing testimonies; let the philoso- 
phers, abandoning speculation, embrace the wondrous revelations 
of the divine Master, offering to him that meed of honor that be- 
longs to the original discoverer and the authoritative teacher ; let the 
religionists of the world join in praises to Him who was the incarnation 
of blessed, immortal truth, and who ever liveth to enlighten our way- 
ward and ignorant race with the thoughts, the wonders, the ideals, 
and the achievements of the eternal King, unto Whom "be glory in 
the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end." 



INDEX. 



A. 

PAGE. 

Abercrombie, 92 

Abstractions, ........ 634-635 

Powerless, 645 

Aecads, Eeligion of 337 

Acropolis, 396 

Addison, Anglo-Saxon of . . . 547 

Advent, The Second, 608 

Associated Events, 617 

Disturbing Features, .... 615 

Misunderstanding, 664 

Object of 617 

Time of 618 

^Esthetics, 463 

Agassiz, Prof., 160 

Argument for Immortality, . 189 

Teleological Position of . . . 176 

Age, The Bronze, 181 

Glacial, 183 

Golden, , 493 

Iron, 181 

Stone, 181 

Agesidamus, 534 

Agriculture, Moral Spirit of, . . 526 

Agnostic, The 210 

Agnosticism, 212 

Objection to 694 

Algebra, 741 

Alemachus, 552 

Alexander, ........ 485, 498 

Alexandrianism, . . . 332, 334, 385 

Alger, W. E., 577 

Theory of Eesurrection, . 593-597 

Al Koran, Science in ..... 446 

Altruism, 513 

Amusements, Cruel 529 

Analogy, Argument from . 463, 464 

Conditions of, 467 

Anaxagoras, 79, 105, 136 

Anaximander, 105 

Anaximenes, 76, 105 

Andamaners, The ....... 343 

Angelo, Michael 548 

Angels, 601 

Condemned, 592, 606 

Annihilation, Doctrine of . . . 591 

Anselm, 87, 221 

Antediluvians, 607 

Antinomies, Absurd 730 



PAGE. 

Antinomies, Kant's 233 

Antioch of Pisidia, 383 

In Syria, 393 

Antisthines, 110 

Anthropology, 422 

Anthropomorphism, 230 

Apes, 173, 179 

Apollo, 15, 51 

Apostasy, Post-millennial . . . 616 

Apostle, 404 

Aquinas, Thomas 87, 685 

Arabia, Paul in, 379, 380 

Arafuras, The 343 

Arbitration, Method of .... 552 

Arcesilaus, 105, 330 

Architecture, Church ..... 550 

Pagan, 550 

Argvll, Duke of ... . 152, 206, 219 

Final Cause, 298 

The supernatural, 475 

Aristotle, .... 26, 82, 83, 105, 207 

Classifications of 213 

Theory of happiness, .... 325 

Aristophanes, 22 

Armada, The Spanish 485 

Arminius, James 103, 538 

Arnold, Matthew 353, 545 

Interpretation of religion, . . 676 

Artists, Modern 549 

Arts, The fine 547 

Christian 548 

Pagan 548 

Patrons of . . 549 

Purification of 718, 719 

Ascension, Christ's 389 

Asia 396 

Minor, 393, 396 

Minor, Churches in . . . 403, 616 

Associationalism 204-206 

Eelation to First Cause, . 267, 268 

Assyria, Philosophy, 337 

Astronomy, Moral impressions 

from 296, 297 

Asylums, 556, 633 

Athanasius, 560 

Creed of 749 

Atheism, . 697 

Athenians, The 218, 665 

Athens, Paul in 396 

761 



762 



INDEX. 



PAGE. 

Atmosphere, Weight of ... . 570 

Atoms, Capacity of 146 

Contents of 151 

Dance of 143 

Development of 150 

Difficulties of 145 

Epicurus's explanation of . . 147 

Form of 151 

Genesis of 144 

Inertia of 149, 150 

Kinds of 146 

Leucippus's explanation of . 148 

Lotze's view of 143-147 

Purpose of 150 

Theory of 79, 154 

Atonement, Nature's teaching 

on 465, 466, 567, 633 

Necessity of 423 

Philosophic 338 

Recognized, 679 

Audubon, 128 

Augustine, 377 

Augustus, 357, 514 

B. 

Baalbec, 326, 386 

Babylon, 540 

Bacon, Francis 88, 106, 558 

Roger 87, 557 

Baer, K. E. Von 280, 697 

Bain, Alexander . 100, 126, 141, 

191, 204, 205, 210 

Bancroft, 495 

Baptism, Christian 656 

Christ's 388 

Barbarian, The 526 

Barnabas 393, 404 

Barrow, Isaac 545 

Bastian, Dr 155 

Bathybius, 157 

Baur, 369 

Beauty, 472 

" Becoming," The 138 

Beecher, Edward 628 

Being, Defined 272 

Problem of 309, 310 

Beneke, 215 

" Ben Hur," 546 

Bentham, Jeremy 100 

Berkeley, 93, 106 

Bhagavad Gita, 331, 336 

Bible, Affirmations in 735 

Anglo-Saxon in 546 

Contradictions in ... . 664, 665 

Developed,. . 663 

Errors in, explained, .... 748 
Human elements in, .... 440 

Infallible, 746 

Investigation of 693 



PAGE. 

Bible, Languages of ... . 747, 748 
Man's origin recorded in . 702, 703 

Manuscripts of 747 

Misunderstandings of . . 665, 666 

Oriental spirit of 748 

Pedagogic character of . . . 628 

Rationalism in 729 

Sealed, 544 

Symbolized, 668 

Tested, 673 

Unity of 647 

Unscientific, 571 

Biogenesis, Theory of . . . 160, 683 

Biology, Christian 454, 455 

Bioplasm, 157, 162 

Births, Law of 509 

Blake, Prof 184 

Bledsoe, A. T 487 

Blood, Harvey's discovery, . . . 294 

Boehme, Jacob 88, 106 

Botanv, 427 

Mysteries of .... ^ ... 684 
Bowne, Prof. . 103, 111, 141, 219, 223 

Brahm, 736 

Brahminism, 345 

A failure, 442, 736 

Pantheistic ' . . . . 443 

Prophetic 413 

Briggs, Prof. C. A 746 

Brown, 92, 106 

Bruno, Giordano 456 

Biichner, Ludwig 170 

Charge against Christianity, . 478 

Buddha, 314 

Buddhism, 345 

Evils of 445 

Its priesthood, 736 

Burns, Robert 207 

Bushnell, Horace 140, 456 

Natural and supernatural, . 475 

View of Christ, 644 

Butler, " Analogy " of 460 

Ethics of 324 

Byron, 545 

C. 

Calamities, 482 

Caligula, 485 

Calvary, 389 

Calvin, John 103, 666 

Camel, Footprint of 234 

Cant, 743 

Kinds of 744 

Capellini, Prof 184 

Caracalla, Baths of 504 

Carey, H. C 252 

Carlyle, Thomas 255 

Caro, M 479 

Carpenter, Dr. W. B. ... 237, 348 



INDEX. 



763 



PAGE. 

Caste, 336, 508 

Castor, 313 

Catholicism, Rornan .... 581, 654 

Claims of 658 

Causation, Aristotle's division, . 235 

Basis of 235, 237 

Comte's denial of knowledge 

of 236 

Doctrine of 31 

Hamilton's interpretation, . 260 
Herbart's interpretation, . . 238 

Hume's rejection of 260 

McCosh's definition, .... 238 
Mill's interpretation of. . 101, 236 

Objections to 240, 244 

Plato's co-causes, 235 

Relation to theory of develop- 
ment, 245 

Value of 244, 246 

Cause, Efficient 234 

Final 286 

Argument from atmosphere, 292 
Argument from botany, . . 298 
Argument from five senses 295, 296 
Argument from function, 290, 291 
Argument from nervous sys- 
tem, 295 

Argument from the sciences, 291 
Argument from zoology, . 298, 299 

Bacon's objection, 303 

Comte's objection, 302 

Darwin's Caution, 287 

Development theory a con- 
firmation, 288, 289 

Hartmann's conception, . . 287 
Hick's objection, .... 288, 289 

Hume's objection, 287 

Idea not intuitional, .... 288 

Janet's facts, 293 

Littre's objection 303 

Relation of efficient to . 289, 290 

Spinoza's objection, 305 

Causer, the Infinite 116 

Causes, Aristotle's 286 

Plato's 286 

Celibacy, 509 

Channing, W. H 414 

Character, Sources of . . . 682, 684 
Chemistry, Definition of ... . 252 

Cheops, Pyramid of 675 

Chiliasm, * 609 

China, Religions of 447 

Choice, Alternate 166 

Christ, Ascension of 652 

Deity of 431 

Magnetism of 643 

Millennial reign of 610 

Paul's relation to .... - . 438 
Personification of ... . 621, 643 



PAGE. 

Christ, Resurrection of . . . 629, 652 

Sinlessness of 644 

Uninterpreted, 565 

Christianity, Absolute religion, 

622, 688 

Affirmations of .... . 734, 735 

Antagonisms to 651 

Anthropology of ... . 422, 423 

Apriorism of 757 

Background of 328 

Benevolence of 633 

Biichner's opinion of ... . 652 

Budding period of 537 

Channing's opinion of . . . 756 

Chronology of 449 

Contempt, A doctrine of . . 696 

Core of 642 

Cosmology of 449 

Credentials of 648 

Creed form of 749, 750 

Decalogue of 720 

Defended, 546 

Defensive, 342 

Development of . . 413, 418, 562 

Dogmatic, 638, 655 

Dynamic elements, . . . 631-633 

Effects of 636, 638 

Empirical, 686 

Enemies of 742 

Eschatology of 424, 579 

Evidences of 631 

Experience the proof of . . 672 
Finality, A religious .... 732 
Finality, A philosophic . 726, 728 

Form. A 623 

Forms of 562, 654 

Founder, The 565 

Gentile, 425 

Geometric, 631 

Historic periods, 722 

Inherent logic, 731 

Inspiring power, 574 

Intellectual, 675, 682 

Jewish, 425 

Life, A . . . . 533, 534, 634, 675 
Limitations of . . . 410, 415, 416 

Magnetism of 642, 650 

Material benefits, .... 542, 543 

Methods, . . . 637 

Military support, 712 

Modern proofs of ... . 649, 650 

Mysteries in, 566 

Necessary truths of 417 

New in 563 

Opposed to Agnosticism, . 694-696 

Papal, 654 

Philosophic basis, 412, 439, 448, 455 

Physical basis, 409 

Plan of 635 



764 



INDEX. 



PAGE. 

Christianity, Platonized, .... 332 

Political 542, 668 

Practical 731 

Prophetic Basis 708 

Province of ...... . 411, 424 

Pseudodox in 660, 670 

Purpose of 408, 410 

Rationalism in 756, 757 

Relation of Church to ... . 515 
Relation of Greek Philosophy 

to 308, 340 

Relation of Judaism to . . . 536 

Relation of Paul to 429 

Relation of Present Age to.741, 742 
Relation of Reforms to . . . . 550 
Relation of Society to . . 507, 515 

Religion of Realities 634 

Revelation the Source of . . . 448 
Revelation of the Supernat- 
ural 409, 410 

Root of 644 

Soteriologv of 423, 575 

Specialty 6f 423 

Sphere of 688 

Spiritual ...... 434, 596, 597 

Standard, A 448 

Statistics of 722, 723 

Stimulating Property of . . . 354 

Supreme 355 

Tasks of 741 

Tendencv to Universality, . . 532 

Triumph of 708, 709 

Truth, 634 

Undeveloped 558 

Unitarian Idea of 414 

Unsystematized, . 441 

Utopianism of 709 

Virtues of 667, 668 

Chronology, Usher's ...... 570 

Church, Controversies in . . 655-657 

Idea of 533, 645 

Instrument, An 646 

Interpreter, Bible 658 

Mission of 645 

Program of 709 

Reign of 515, 516 

Supervision, Paul's 397 

Church-founder, The 403 

Churchism, State 515 

Cicero, 136, 335 

Circumcision, 382 

Civilization, Asiatic . . 496, 505, 540 

Buckle's Theory of 312 

Christian 541 

Corner-stone of ...••• . 643 

Draper's Theory 501 

European 497 

Forces of 311 

Historic Development of . . .311 



PAGE. 

Civilization, Model 539 

Unity of 497, 498 

Clark, Bishop D. W 594 

Prof. H. J. . . 155 

Clarke, James F 414 

Classification, Scientific Objection 

to 165 

Cleanthus, 84 

Clement 283, 707 

Clifford, Prof 228 

Cocker, Dr. B. F. . 100, 239, 240, 331 

Coincidence, Doctrine of 241 

Coleridge, • .... 64 

Coliseum, Significance of . . 503, 504 

Colleges, Christian, 547 

Color, 463 

Comets, 486 

Coming, The Second 437 

Common-sense, Philosophy of, 

89, 92, 197 

Common-sense, Objections to.260, 261 

Comte, . 99, 106 

Positivism of 259, 346 

Communism 499, 517 

Apostolic 661 

Concept, Analysis of 353 

Emotional Content of ... . 350 

Religious 346 

Value of 353 

Condillac, 91 

Confucius, 331 

Religion of 724 

Congenitalism, 207 

Conscience, .... ...... 351 

Origin of 179 

Consciousness, A Birth-mark, . .165 

Definitions of 677, 678 

Mansel's Objection to ■ . . . . 122 
Mill's (James) Idea of . . . .210 

Needle-points of 120 

Unity of 585 

Conservatism, 575, 576 

Constantine, 637 

Consubstantiation, 656 666 

Conversion, 363, 573 

Paul's 365 

Philosophic ■ 327 

Continuity, Law of 278, 279 

Cook, Joseph 239 

Cooke, Prof 243 

R. J 594 

Copernicus, 520 

Cosmology, Jewish 333 

Council, Church 382 

Cousin, Opinions of . . . 81, 86, 109 

Plato defended by 35 

Rationalism of 270 

Creation, 142 

According to Law, 152 



INDEX. 



765 



PAGE. 

Creation, Man's, . . 521 

Modality of, 700 

Order of 459 

Creationism, Theory of . . . 160, 167 

Creed, Christian 749 

Creed-maker, The 739 

Cromwell, 128 

Crystals, 683 

Cudworth, 213, 239 

Ethics of 324 

D. 
Dalltnger, 155 

Dante, . . . ■ - 545 

Inferno, 633 

Darwin, Charles 155, 156 

Darwinism, 691, 697 

Davis, Henry 22 

Davies, Sir John, 143 

Dawkins, Prof 184 

Dawson, Prof . . 184, 255 

Dead, The 599 

Deduction, 674, 757 

Definitions 26 

Delphino, Prof 156 

Deity, The Unconscious 122 

Democracy, 528 

Democritus 78, 105 

Descartes 88, 89, 106, 206 

Descent, Theory of 171 

Development, Theory of ... . 156 

Dickens, Charles 546 

Diderot, 91 

Diogenes, 108 

Dionysiodorus, 44 

Diseases, 482 

Dispensation, The New 626 

Dogmatism, Theologic 89 

Dorchester, Dr. D 723 

Dore, Gustave 549 

Dorner, Dr 606 

Doubt, Philosophic 116 

Draper, Prof. 334 

Physiological Law of Cviliza- 

tion 501 

Drew, Samuel 593 

Druidism, 661 

Drummond, Henry ... «... 155 
Identity of Natural and Spirit- 
ual 474 

Dryad, The 136 

Dry den, John 143 

Dualism, 89 

Dual, The 552 

Dynamite, 555 

E. 

Earth, Antiquity of 700 

Astronomic Center 520 



PAGE. 

Earth, Conflagration of 452 

Destruction of, 453 

Globular 569 

Subdued 524 

Theories Respecting ..... 570 

Earthquakes, 486 

Easter, 659 

Eclecticism, 733 

Eden, Promise in 627 

Education, Christianity the In- 
spiration of 518, 547 

Nations leading in 547 

Oriental 547 

Plato's Curriculum . . . • . 510 

Problem of 509, 510 

Relation to False Religions . . 724 

Remedy for Evil 49 

System of 510 

Egypt, Religions of ...... . 447 

Efeatics, The 77 

Electricity 131, 292 

Elements, Chemical . . . .131, 157 

Proof that they are Effects, . . 242 

Elisha, Prayer ...•••... 277 

Emerson, R. W 21, 189, 469 

Emotionalism, . 89, 95 

Emotions, Religious .... 676, 677 

Empedocles, 70, 105 

Translation of 577 

Empiricism 89 

Energy, Amount of 588 

Tyndall's Theory of 239 

Ephesus, 3^;3, 396, 397, 402 

Epicurus, 105 

Philosophy of 84, 147 

Equivalence, Doctrine of . . . . 242 

Erigena, Scotus, 87 

Eschatology, Christian 582 

Development of 627-629 

Effect of . 638, 639 

Homeric 604 

Jewish 604 

Revision Necessary 630 

Essenes, The 499 

Ethics, Evolutionary 101 

Intuitional 324 

Natural 706 

Origin of 321 

Supernatural 706 

Etiquette .718 

Eucharist, The i . 603 

Europe, Paul in 395, 396 

Eutychianism 603 

Evil, An Atonement 489 

Apology, for 640 

Condemned, 640 

Defeated, 490 

Defined, 489 

A Discipline 487 



766 



INDEX. 



Evil, Divine Perfections In- 
volved, 487-489 

Future Possibility of 492 

Man's Duty Respecting . . . 551 
Method of Extinction, . 454, 465 

Mission of 481 

Moral 486 

Natural 486 

Penalty, A 487 

Presence of 315, 479 

Principle of • ■ • 33 

Product of Law, 481 

Relation to Hell, 492 

Relation to History, 483 

Relation to Man, .... 483-488 

Self-destroying 484 

Teleologv of 304 

Test of " 488 

Unrecognized, 679 

Uses of 478, 479 

Evolution, 89, 101 

Breaks in the Law of ... . 704 

Christianity an 722 

Condemned, 704 

Denned, 470, 471 

Example of 624 

In History, 282 

In Mind, 201, 202, 320 

In Nature, 282 

Kinds of 704 

Relation to First Cause, 268, 269, 

626 

Relation to Scriptural Truth, . 433 

Evolutionists, Disagreement 

among 754 

Experience, Brahminical Doc- 
trine of 715 

Criterion of Truth, . . . 672, 674 

Eschatology an 681 

Holiness an 680, 681 

Misunderstood, 685 

Reliability of 686 

Religion an 435 

Processes of 682 

Schleiermacher's Opinion . . 678 

Spiritual 676-678 

Unconscious 678 



Fables, ... 37, 41, 55, 57, 326, 735 

Faculties, Mental 209, 349 

Faith, Justification by 538 

Fairbairn, Prof 428 

Famines, 544 

Faraday, 148 

Farrar," Canon 359, 606 

Ferrier, Prof • .190 

Feudalism, 529 

Fitche 96, 106 



PAGE. 

Finalities, 726 

Fiske, John 255 

Theism of 754 

Force, Attributes of ... . 250, 251 
Buddhistic Origin of Doctrine 

of 445 

Centripetal 250 

Electricity the Content of . . 252 

Ends of 254 

Internal 250 

Manifestations of 250 

Modality of 251 

Persistence of 252, 702 

Personalit}' of 253 

Plato's Definition of 247 

Relation to Matter, 249 

Self-consciousness of 254 

Transmission of 249 

Forces, Classification of 248 

Conservation and Correlation 

of 158 

Cousin's View of 540 

Secondary 251 

Foreknowledge, Divine 603 

Fossils, Age of 180, 181, 183 

Foster, Bishop R. S 593, 594 

Fourier, • 473 

Socialism of 502 

Franklin, Benjamin 473 

Fundamentals 327, 



Galatia, 403 

Galen, 198, 293, 672 

Gamaliel, 360 

Gautama, 330, 331, 445 

Gehenna, 590, 605 

Geikie, Prof 184 

Generation, Spontaneous, . 155, 683 
Genesis, Man's creation, . . 521, 703 

Non-mythological, 572 

Strauss's opinion of 662 

Gentiles, Gospel among the . . . 394 

Paul's mission to 392 

Rights of 382 

Gentilism, Conflict with .... 383 

Geologists, Labors of 180 

Geology, 741 

Pentateuch al 451 

Geometry, 20, 152 

Geranium, Geometric 632 

Geulinex, 90 

Gibbon, Anglo-Saxon of .... 546 
Objections to Christianity, . . 649 
Progress of Christianity ac- 
counted for, 637, 638 

Gillie, John 548 

Gnosticism, 337, 401, 562 

John's attack on 667 



INDEX. 



767 



PAGE. 

G nosticism, Traces in eschatology , 596 

God, A priori conception of . . .120 

Argument from correlation, . 271 

Author's position, 270 

Barbarians' ideas of, . . 343, 348 

Belief in 119 

Biichner's objection, 274 

Conceptions of an absolute, . 272 
Development of the idea, 625, 626 

Existence assumed, 222 

First act of 142 

Geometric fulfillment, .... 632 
Hamilton's alternative a proof 125 
Hamilton's idea of the uncon- 
ditioned, 266 

Hartmann's idea, 263 

Involved in evil, 487 

Key-word to truth, 455 

Knowable, 226, 685 

Lotze's idea, 255 

Necessary, 143 

Personal 226, 273, 285 

Philosophic idea of 728 

Schopenhauer's idea, 262 

Spencer's interpretation, . . . 698 

Spinoza's idea, 273 

Testimony of Nature, 275, 281, 470 
Testimony of Psychology, 276, 277 

Tyndall's idea, 274 

Goethe, 104, 134, 587 

Good, Contents of the 48 

Gorgias, 80, 105, 456 

Gospel, Benevolence of the . . . 751 
Figurative in ....... . 744 

John's 667 

Millennial teachings in . 613, 614 

Paul's 376 

Philosophical 743 

Reign ends, 616 

Spiritualities of 751 

Supreme, 612, 614 

Triumph prophesied 613 

Gospels, Fragmentary 427 

Government, Bad 485 

Christian 541 

Divine 419 

Necessity of good 527 

Philosophic idea of ... . . 313, 314 
Grasshopper, an Athenian em- 
blem, 173 

Grau Chacos, The 343 

Gravitation, 148, 297, 473 

Newton doubted 228 

Gravity, Spencer's idea of . . . . 248 

Greece, Birthplace of philosophy, 71 

Systems of philosophy in . , 72 

Grote, 18, 185 

Associational principle, . . . 313 
Grotius, 535 



PAGE. 

Grove, Sir W. R 130 

Growth, Law of 206 

H. 

Hackel, 126, 165 

Ani malic stages of 173 

Hades, . . 54, 335, 339, 597, 604-606 

Hall, Robert 566 

Hamilton, Sir William . 106, 123, 125 
Doctrine of relativity, . . 265, 266 

Paralogisms, 267 

Hammond, Dr 204 

Happiness, Sources of 325 

Harmonites, The 499 

Harris, Prof. S 270, 283 

Hartley, David 100 

Mental action explained . . . 202 

Hartmann, 99, 106 

Heaven, 340, 619 

Hegel, 97, 106 

Classification of 196 

Doctrines of 265 

Philosophy of mind, .... 195 

Hell, 491, 492 619 

Helvetius, 91 

Helmholtz, 319 

Hennel, Mr ••.... 644 

Heraclitus, • . 78, 105 

Herbart, • 106, 140 

Herbert, Lord 225 

Herder, 348 

Heredity, 479 

Heresy, 576, 739 

Hermon. Mt 388 

Heterodox, The 653 

Heterodoxy, 581 

Hilaire, St. Geoffroy 149 

Hildebrand, 494, 637 

Hinduism, 737 

Hippias 80 

History, Gibbon's 503 

Product, A 481 

Providential development, A . 483 

The test, 535 

Hobbes, 198 

Ethics of 322 

Indebted to Pythagoras, . . . 199 
Interpretation of mind, . . .199 
Interpretation of phenomena,. 199 

Materialism of 200 

Holiness 679, 680 

Philosophic, 52, 53 

Holsten, 370 

Home, Christian 552-554 

Pagan 718 

Homer, Incident from 277 

Plato's condemnation of . 50, 340 

Sin not portrayed in 454 

Homology, Argument from . 132, 133 



768 



INDEX. 



PAGE. 

Hooker, 343 

Humanity, Roman Worship of . 621 

Humboldt, 130, 135 

Hume, David 91, 106, 203 

Theory of consciousness, . . . 215 
Huxley, Prof. . 131, 155-157, 206 

239, 248, 258 

Hydrogen, 132 

Substance-unit 468 

Hypatia 712 

Hypothesis, Diluvian 451 

Nebular 137, 450 

Institutionary 451 

Substantial agreement . . 451, 452 
Theistic 450 

1. 

Idea, Meanings of 744 

Idealism, 89, 92 

Christian 139 

Decline of absolute 98 

Relation to First Cause, . 263-265 

Weaknesses of 265 

Ideals, Geometric 152 

Ideas, Innate 216, 225, 351 

Pseud 102 

Religious 344 

Identity, Law of 163 

Ignatius, 670 

Immanence, Doctrine of divine . 240 

Immortality, 53, 339, 424 

Argument for brutes, .... 588 

Certainty, 589 

Developed, 588 

Endowment, 591 

Gift, 591 

Goethe's faith, 587 

Hugo's faith, 587 

Judaic Intimations, 589 

Lotze's idea, 586 

Moral effect of belief in . . . 586 

Necessity, 584 

Objections 588 

Pagan doctrine of 579 

Paul's idea of 437 

Personal 582 

Philosophical 584 

Physical, impossible, .... 583 

Probable 583 

Revealed, 578, 579 

Strauss's unbelief, 587 

Testament, The New, on . . 628 

Testament, The Old, on . . . 628 

Incarnation, Geometric, .... 633 

Relation to the Universe, . . 306 

Value, 388 

Vital, 737 

Incarnations, Brahminical ... 337 
Buddhistic 716 



PAGE. 

Indians, The 577 

Individualism, 527 

Induction 674, 757 

Industrialism, 510 

Inertia, 164 

Infinite, Definition 120 

Related, 121 

Super-rational, 123 

Unrelated 121 

Inquisitions 712 

Inspiration attacked, 747 

Defined, 219 

Difficulties, 564 

Forms of 15 

Institutions, Benevolent 555 

Social 528 

Intemperance, 551 

Interpretations, Biblical 559 

Intolerance, 742 

Intuitionalism 121 

Intuitional Truths, Criteria of . . 236 
Theistic argument from . 284, 285 

Invention, 543 

Iron, Knowledge of 224 

J. 

Jacobi, 95, 106, 216 

Jaeger, Gustave 188 

Janet, Explanation of Evil, . . . 304 
Final cause of nature .... 306 

Jerome 357 

Jerusalem, Schools of 360 

Jew, Religious development of . . 627 
John the Baptist, ........ 426 

John of Salisbury, ....... 87 

Johnson, 743 

Judaism, Conflict with . . .381, 382 

Defense of 361 

Inadequacy of 535, 536 

Religious content of 687 

Judgment, Basis of 608 

Day of 437, 607 

Scenes, • . . . . 605 

Time of ... 617, 618 

Jupiter, 37, 477, 645 

Justice, Plato's definition of . . . 464 
Justification, Doctrine of . . 384, 385 
Justinian, 86 

K. 

Kames, Lord, 178 

Kant, Immanuel 93, 94, 106 

Antinomies of 233 

His philosophy criticized, . . 264 

King, T. Starr 178, 482 

Kingsley, Bishop C 594 

Konig, 721 

Knowledge, A posteriori 257 

Hamilton's admission, .... 232 



INDEX. 



769 



Knowledge, Intuitional . . . 215, 217 

Latent 217 

Limitations of 227, 228 

Necessary, 577 

Object of Search, 695 

Possibility of 212 

Progress in 230, 231 

Reflection a source of ... . 218 

Relational, 118, 126 

Sense-knowledge, 214 

Sources of 212-223 

Subject-matter of ... . 223-227 
Superficial .......... 223 

L. 

Labor, 517 

Lactantius, 707 

Ladd, Dr. G. T 746 

Laertius, Diogenes . . . . 22, 61, 112 

Lama, The Buddhistic 736 

Lamarck, . . . . • 156 

Lamartine, 743 

La Mettrie, , 91 

Lang, Heinrich, 687 

Language, Anglo-Saxon 546 

Greek, 529 

Origin of 662 

Purification of ....... . 529 

Unity of 529, 530 

Languages, 141 

Primitive 175 

Lao-tzu, • • . . 330, 331 

Laplace, 458 

Law, 225 

Definition, 141 

Force of 462 

International ........ 517 

Knowledge of 223 

Laws, Discovery of - 473 

Relation of natural and spirit- 
ual 473 

Laycock, Dr 239 

Leibnitz, 92, 106 

Characteristic of truth, . . . 674 

Theory of mind 194 

Lent, 660 

Leroux, 225 

Idea of Christianity, 707 

Leucippus, 105 

Lewes, Criticisms of ... . 108, 109 

Lewis, Prof. Tayler 589 

Liberia, Natives of 519 

Life, Deathless 585 

Definitions of 161, 162 

Kinds of 162 

Nature of 320 

Possibilities of 318 

Theories of 155, 320 

Lindsev, Prof 340, 536 



49 



PAGE. 

Linnaeus, 130 

Littre, M 303 

Livingstone, Dr. • 348 

Locke, John 90, 106 

Mistakes of 257, 258 

Philosophy condemned, . . . 193 

Sensationalism of 192 

Value of sensationalism, . . . 214 

Loggia, Raphael's , . 108 

Logos, the word, • . 667 

Lotze, Hermann . 103, 106, 107, 

141, 239, 242 

Lubbock, Sir John, . . 174, 178, 343 

Lucretius, 74 

Final cause, 305 

Luther, 538, 544 

Papal education of 659 

Personal salvation taught 

by 678 

Lyell, Sir Charles, . 174, 181, 182, 185 
Lystra, 394-396 

M. 

Machinery, Origin of 543 

Machpelah, 629 

Magic • 337 

Magnetism, 228 

Malebranche, 90, 215 

Mallock, Theory of 314 

Malta, 397 

Man, Ancestry of 702 

Antiquity of . . 179, 183, 184, 748 

Barbaric Idea of 526 

Buddhist conception of . . . 446 

Development of 522 

Dominion of 524, 525 

Eulogies of 168 

Exaltation (Paul's) of .... 432 

Fall of 591 

Flatterer, A 520 

Freedom of 491 

Future, the 519 

Immortal 759 

Lordship of 312 

Masterpiece, A 523 

Occupations, 525-527 

Origin of 170 

Palaeolithic 181 

Poor, the 543 

Primitive 174 

Problem of 125 

Relation of Christianity to . . 523 
Relation to animal kingdom, 

172, 173 

Relation to nature, . . . 169, 469 

Religious 349, 350 

Rights of 507, 508 

Sanctification of .... 531, 532 
Scientific spirit in ... . 530, 531 



770 



INDEX. 



PAGE. 

Man, Scriptural representation 

of 433, 434, 453 

Self-sufficient 534 

Mandeville, Ethics of 322 

Manes • 331 

Mansei,' ..'!.' 96, 119, 123, 411, 664 

Marriages, Royal 66 

Martineau, Dr 680 

Martyr, Justin 283 

Chiliasm of 609 

Martyrdom, Value of 389 

Martyrs, Resurrection of . . 610, 611 

Materialism, Ancient 73 

Assailed 719 

Ionic 73 

Mathematics, 686 

Matter, Brahminical notions of. . 444 
Buddhistic notions of . - . . 445 

Co-eternity of 32 

Definitions of 141 

Deification of 697 

Dynamical theory of 248 

Explanation of 206 

Forms of 462 

Non-existence of 124 

Organization of 33, 159 

Pre-existence of 136 

Spherical tendency of ... . 470 

Maupertius, 299 

Maurice, F. D 710 

McCosh, Dr 103, 348, 662 

Criterion of Truth, 674 

Mcllvaine, J. H 571 

Mediation, Basis of 690 

Memory, Unexplained 205 

Merrill, Bishop S. M 609 

Messiahship, 383, 627 

Method, Ahuse 727 

Biblical 693 

Boundaries of 692 

Philosophical 309 

Psychological 123 

Supernatural 439 

Methodism, 713 

Mettrie, De La 203 

Military, the 508 

Mill, James 177, 214 

Mill, John S. . 100, 101, 106, 141, 200 
Interpretation of Mind, . . . 201 

Socialism of 502 

Millennium, Apocalyptic .... 610 

Definition of 610 

Gradual 615 

Greek Idea of 493 

Jewish Idea of 493 

Limited 612-616 

Political 611 

Religious . . 612 

Scientific 612 



PAGE. 

Millennium, Subsidence of . . . 616 

Miller, Hugh 128 

xMinark, 248 

Mind, Attributes of 229 

Creating power of 208 

Definitions of ....... . 209 

Fact of 190 

Freedom of ........ . 208 

Hamilton's opinion, 177 

Interpretations of 192 

Laws of 206 

Relation to Body, 204 

Self-determining power, . . . 203 

Ministry, Christian 533 

Ecclesiastical Differences Con- 
cerning 657 

Miracles, 387, 403 

Hume's objection, 237 

Objections, 649 

Missionary Center, 393 

Missions, Christian 556 

Mivart, St. George 157, 250 

Ethics of . 706 

Mohammed, 354 

Methods of 637 

Religion of 446, 447 

Sovereign Principle of . . 505, 506 

Mohammedanism, 710 

A Failure, 724 

Moleschott, 204 

Monarchy, 514 

Monadism, 93 

Monism, 135, 171 

Monogamy, . . . 553 

Monophysitism, 603 

Monopoly, 555 

Monotheism, 334, 347 

Defective 736 

Jewish 622, 625 

Montaigne, 116 

Monuments, Egyptian and Roman.185 
Scriptures Confirmed by . . • 748 

Moon, Size of . . . 84 

Morality, Christian 555 

Definitions of . 513 

Necessity of 512 

Pagan 555 

Relative 323 

Mormonism, 553 

Morlot, M 181 

Morris, Prof 140, 198 

Mortillet, M 181 

Moses, 142, 151, 333 

Books of 746 

Creation week of 451 

Errors of 571 

Geology of 570 

Sustained, 662 

Motion, 148 



INDEX. 



771 



PAGE. 

Motion, Kinds of 34 

Suggestive 461 

Muller, Julius 677 

Miiller, Max 710 

Musseus, 137 

Music, Mill's Fear 187 

Pythagoras on 77 

Mysteries, Christian 568 

" Eleusinian 566 

Solved . . . . 730 

Mysticism, Christianity a . . . . 669 

Swedenborg's 134 

Mythologies, 15, 74, 639 

Overthrown . . . 329 

N. 

Napoleon, 485 

Naturalism, Ethical ....... 323 

Nature, 127 

Beauty of 472 

Cause of 237 

Christianity the Counterpart of. 633 
Common Representation of . 129 
Emerson's idea of . . . 475, 476 

Final cause of 306, 477 

Goethe's idea of 134 

Greek interpretation of . . . 477 

Hackel's idea of 133 

Idealistic interpretation, . . .139 

Laws of 473 

Man's place in 703 

Mathematical spirit of . . 138, 631 

Mivart's idea of 133 

Moral lessons from 475 

Order of 237 

Personified 620 

Planck's idea of 133 

Smith's (Adam) idea of . . . 476 
Socrates's indifference to . . .128 

Spinoza's idea of 138 

Store-house 563 

Swedenborg's idea of .... 134 

Theism of 701 

Unity of 130, 471 

Neo-Platonism, 86 

Neptune, 477 

Newcomb, Prof 303 

Newton, R. Heber ....... 745 

Sir Isaac 148, 235 

Sir Isaac, discovery of ... . 473 

Niebuhr, 516 

Nihilism, 511 

Nile, the 241 

Nirvana, Doctrine of 315 

Nominalism, 247 

Novelist, the 546 

O. 

Occamism, 323 

Oersted, 140 



PAGE. 

Oligarchv, 514 

Olives, Mt. of 389 

"Omne Vivum ex ovo," .... 155 

Ontology, Problem of 118 

Oppression, Social 511 

Ordinances, Church 656 

Origen, 167, 283 

Theory of the Resurrec- 
tion 593, 594 

Owen, Richard 175, 176, 343 

Oxygen, 131, 191 

Discovery of 416 

Is an effect, 242, 243 

P. 

Paganism, Claim of 646 

Fate of 724 

Fulfilled 716 

Greek 620 

Pangenesis, Theory of 156 

Pantheism, 90, 687 

Errors of 443, 444, 477 

Origin of 476 

Papacy, the 658, 666 

Paphos, Miracle at 403 

Parables, the . . . . . . . . . .567 

Park, Mungo 348 

Parker, Theodore 283 

Parmenides, 105 

Parseeism, 724 

Parthenon, the 504 

Pascal, 456 

Pasteur, M 155 

Patmos, 590 

Paul, Ambition, 374, 429 

Apostle, an « . . 406 

Birthplace of 357 

Career of 391 

Chrysostom's opinion of . . . 356 

Cities visited 402 

Classical education 359 

College life in Jerusalem . 360, 361 
Conflict with Gentilism, . . .383 
Conflict with Judaism, . . 381, 382 
Conflict with Philosophy,. 384, 385 

Conversion of 363-368 

Criticisms of his Epistles, . . 400 
Damascus, going to . . . 365, 366 
Defense of Messiahship, . . . 383 

Doctrines of 384 

Effect of his conversion, . . . 368 

Empiricist, not an 358 

Energy of 374 

Enthusiasm of 392 

Epistles of 399-402 

Eschatology of 435 

Exponent of Christianity, . . 356 

Farrar's opinion of 398 

Greatness of 405, 406 



772 



INDEX. 



PAGE. 

Paul, Ideas of 376 

In Rome, 397 

Intellectual temperament, . . 373 

Jerusalem, going to 397 

Judaic Spirit, 372, 373 

Luke's influence on .... . 380 
Luther's opinion of his Epis- 
tles,* 400 

Methods of 690 

Miracle power of . - . . 403, 404 
Missionary tour, the first . 393, 394 
Missionary tour, the 2d. . 395, 396 
Missionary tour, the third.396, 397 

Monad's opinion of 398 

Moral character of . . . . 372, 405 

National Spirit, 373 

Parental influence on . . 359, 360 

Persecutor, the 362 

Peter's influence on . . . 379, 380 

Physique of 358 

Preparation for Apostleship, . 367 

Prophecies of . 407 

Psychological conversion 

of - • 364, 370, 371 

Qualifications for leadership, . 375 
Revelations of ... . 378, 390, 399 
Renan's criticisms of his Epis- 
tles, 401 

Renan's opinion of 398 

Scientific explanation of his 

conversion, 369, 370 

Sermon in Antioch in Pisi- 

dia, 383, 384 

Specific teaching of 430 

Stephen's influence on . . 377, 378 

Stvle of 399 

Theologian, the . . < . . . . .428 
Time of his conversion, . 366, 367 

Title of Apostle, 404 

Trial in Caesarea, 397 

Trial in Jerusalem, 397 

Visit to Athens, 396 

Peabody, A. P 666 

Pentateuch , Authorship con- 
tested, 721, 746 

Pentecost, 538 

Perictione, 15 

Peripatetics, 422 

Path of 21 

Persians, Religion of 334 

Personalities, 327 

Personality, Man's 167 

Peschel, Oskar 697 

Pessimism, 89 

Cure for 318 

Overbalanced 316 

Relation to first cause, .... 2(52 

Suicidal 317 

Peter exalted, . . . 404 



PAGE. 

Peter, Relation to Paul, . . . 379, 380 

Petitio Principii, 191 

Phenomena, Explanation of . . . 234 

Philo, 191 

Phrases of 667 

Philippi, Miracle in 403 

Philosophers, Ancient 105 

Christian 89 

Modern 106 

Philosophy, Alienation of . . . .689 

Boundaries of 114, 688 

Breakdown of 307 

Confirmation of Truth, ... 728 
Conflicts with Christianity, . 755 

Definitions, 112 

Disappearance in Christianity, 732 

Divisions of 110 

Embarrassments of 730 

Fundamental truth of ... . 702 
Greek, a development, .... 333 

Inspiration of 16, 334 

Moral 81 

Opposed to Agnosticism, . 694, 696 

Province of 108 

Pseudodox in 653 

Reconciliation of Christianity 

with 689 

Responsible for antagonism, . 753 

Roman 74 

School-master, A 707 

Theological tendency of . . . 259 

Transition period of 755 

Phrenology, 206 

Pictet, Adolf 348 

Pietist, Position of 692 

Pius IX., Pope 220 

Plato, Academy of 20, 21 

Biographies of 17 

Birth of 18 

Caste taught, 57 

Character, moral 18 

Communism, 59 

Cosmology, 30 

Educational schemes, . • .49, 50 
Emerson's opinion of .... 21 

Esoteric Philosophy, 23 

Ethics of 45, 46, 65 

Governmental Ideas, . . .57, 58 

Ideas, Doctrine of 35 

Immortality, Doctrine of 39, 40, 53 
Intemperance condemned, . 45, 46 
Knowledge, Limitations of . . 43 
Knowledge, sources of . . . 41, 42 
Language, Philosophical ... 64 
Lewes's opinion of .... 26, 60 
Logos defined, ....... 44 

Marriage views of 58, 66 

Method of 26 

Mind, Definition of 41 



INDEX. 



773 



PAGE 

Plato, Monotheism of 28-30 

Motion, doctrine of . • . .36, 63 

Mythology, 29 

Originalities of 32, 63 

Philosophy, Influence of . . 62, 67 

Physiology of 37 

Prayer, Utility of, 48, 52 

Prometheus, 37 

Providence, Doctrine of ... 51 

Psychology of • 36, 37 

Purgatory suggested, 55 

Reminiscence, Doctrine of . . 38 

Republic, Ideal . 58 

Services to religion, 68 

Socialism, 56 

Socialism, objections to . . 66, 67 

Socrates's pupil, 19 

Socratic element in 24 

Soul, Depravity of . . . 39, 40, 47 

Soul, Nature of 39 

Soul, Pre-existence of .... 38 

Spirituality, 52-55 

Stvle, Dialogistic 23 

System of 21 

Theology of 27 

Transmigration taught, ... 54 

Travels of 20 

Universals, Doctrine of ... 36 
Universe, Conception of . . . 34 

Works classified, 22-25 

Writer, A 23, 60, 61 

Plotinus, 86, 596 

Mysticism of 669 

Pluto, 477, 641 

Pnyx, The 396, 504, 505 

Pollux, 313 

Polygamy, 509, 603, 666 

Authorized, 718 

Polytheism, .... 330, 335, 347, 471 

Extinction of 641 

Taught by Greeks, 477 

Porter, Dr. Noah 161 

Poseidon, 335 

Positivism, 89, 99 

Post-millennianism, 609 

Pratt, Orson 666 

Pre- Adamites, 185 

Pre-millennianism, 609 

Privateering, 543 

Probation, Force of I Peter iii, 

18-20, 607 

Necessity, 607 

Philosophical 697 

Second 606 

Problems, 113 

Christian, 564 

Prodicus, .... • 80 

Progress, Idea of 725 

Law of 104 



PAGE. 

Progress, Political 717 

Properties, Knowledge of ... . 224 

Property, Rights of 543 

Prophecy, 387 

Value, 648 

Prophets, Persian 413 

Protagoras, 105 

Protestantism, 654 

Tainted 659 

Protoplasm, 157 

Protozoan, 585 

Prout, Dr 131 

Providence, Doctrine of 335 

Magnetism of 642 

Methods, 551 

Scriptural representations,. 420-422 

Psalms, Singing of 656 

Pseudodox, the 653 

Psychology, Relation to philoso- 
phy, Ill 

Purgatory, 581, 658 

Puritanism, 495 

Purposes divine, unknowable, . . 302 

Pusey 666 

Pyrrho, 85, 116 

Pyrrhonism, 210 

Pythagoras, 77, 105 

Philosophy of 138 

Philosophy defined, 112 

Q. 

Qualifications, Paul's 375 

Quarantania, Mount . . • ... 388 

Quarrels, Scientific 754 

Qua tref ages, M • .174 

Quotations, Poetic 89, 143 

R. 

Race, A perfect 188 

Unity of the 554 

Races, Plurality of 186 

Raphael, 548 

Rationalism, 89, 100, 664 

Mansel's objection, . 270, 271, 411 

Respected, 755 

Rationalists, Tubingen School of . 370 

Rawlinson, George, 721 

Realism, Ideal 89, 98 

Reason, The .207 

Defective methods, 232 

Established methods 756 

Kant's classification of . . . 89, 94 

Spontaneous . . 217 

Theistic content of 283 

Reconciliation, Ground of ... . 699 

Redemption, 717 

Reformation, German 406 

Leadership of 713 

Swiss 740 



774 



INDEX. 



PAGE. 

Reformation, Value of 544 

Regeneration, 434 

Baptismal 659 

Brahminical . . 715 

Error concerning 678 

Spontaneous 683 

Reid, Thomas 92, 106 

" Common-sense," . . . 260, 261 
Criticisms of ........ 198 

Interpretation of mind, . . . 197 
Religion, Central position impreg- 
nable, • . . 753 

Development, A 561 

Essentials of 620 

Forces of 622 

Jewish 661 

Magnetism of 647 

Natural 463, 673 

Objective 673 

Old ■ . . 560 

Revealed 560 

Subjective 673 

Words of . 744, 745 

Religions, Assyrian ....... 653 

Defects of . . . 726 

Disintegration of 714 

Foundation of 351, 646 

Hindu 442 

Historical 734 

Inspiration of 711 

International 532 

Missionary 710 

Non-evolutionary 624 

Race 710 

Rights of 711 

Spinal cord of ........ 621 

Strauss's explanation of . . . 347 

Tests of 671 

Verities of 715 

Remains, Human 183 

Reminiscence, Doctrine of . . . . 216 

Renan, Criticism of Christianity, . 668 

Paul's conversion explained, . 369 

Resurrection, Alger's theory . . . 597 

Cook's physical 594-597 

In Nain, 684 

Jesus' 385, 600, 601 

Nature's suggestions 467 

Necessity of 386 

Old Testament Materialistic, . 598 
Paul's exposition, . 435, 436, 

599, 600 

Physical rejected, .... 595, 596 

Problem of 592 

Scriptural language perverted, 

598, 599 

Seven theories of 593 

Spiritual theory affirmed . 597-602 
Spiritual theory, scientific . . 601 



PAGE. 

Resurrection, Strauss's criticism 

Christ's -652 

Theories reduced, 594 

Time of 618 

Vaguely taught, 568 

Word defined 594, 595 

XVth Chap, of I Corinthians,. 600 

Retributions, Eternal 54 

Reuss, Prof • 371, 721 

Revelation, 219, 221 

Ambiguity of 669 

Concerning God, 222 

Concerning man's purification,222 
Concerning nature, ..... 222 

Darkness of • . 580 

Evolutional 624, 625 

Exhaustless, 738, 739 

Limits of 569, 663, 666 

Necessity of 6v8 

Objection to 415, 570 

Philosophical 448 

Specialty of 419 

Stages of 340 

Review, International ...... 205 

Revolution, The French 485 

Righteousness, 680 

Ritter, 348 

Rome, Corruptions in .... • . 553 

Pagan 503, 504 

Paul in 397' 

Ross, Sir John 348 

Rousseau, • .... 128 

Rush, James 678 

S. 

Sacrifice, Christian idea of . . . 466 

Socrates's 338 

Sahib, Nana ............ 510 

Salvation, Plan of -432 

Sanctification, 367 

Sanhedrin, Paul before 599 

Satan, . 610, 616 

Schaff, Dr 370 

Schelling, 97, 106 

Schem, Dr 723 

Schiller, 587 

Schlegel 109 

Idea of God, 225 

Schleiermacher, . • 96 

Classification of Plato's Works, 22 

Theologv of .665 

Schliemann, Dr 181, 308 

Schmid, Rudolf 177, 689 

Scholasticism, 331 

School, Concord .103 

Schopenhauer, 98, 106 

Pessimism of 314 

Schultze, Max 157 

Schwegler, 24, 99 



INDEX. 



775 



Science, False claims of 691 

Limitations of 457 

Modern 341 

Province of 116 

Scott, Sir Walter 128 

Scotus, Duns, . . _ 87 

Sectarianism, Oriental 654 

Selection, Natural 697 

Self, Belief in 172 

Knowledge of 225 

Self-existence, 113 

Seneca, 136, 140, 329 

Eulogizes Christian virtues, . . 706 
Sensation, Denned . .' . . . . .219 

Knowledge by 258 

Sensationalism, 257 

Aristotle's 258 

Sense, a moral 178 

Sepulcher, Christ's . . . . . . . .388 

Sermon, Nature's 460 

Paul's at Antioch, .... 383, 384 

Sexes, Proportion of 509 

Shaftesbury, Lord 324 

Shakespeare, Anglo-Saxon of . . 547 

Philosophy hint of 117 

Poetical mind of 198 

Shintoism, 345, 724 

Reproduced 738 

Sheol, 546, 603, 605, 629, 639 

Siam, Living in 552 

Siji, 454, 433, 678 

Destroyed 611 

Original 480 

Reproved 679 

Secret 50 

Sirius, 241 

Skepticism, Attacks on 742 

Skulls, 183 

Smith, Adam 293 

Doctrine of Sympathy, .... 322 
Theory of Happiness, .... 325 

George 337 

W. Robertson 663 

W. Roberston, Authorship of 

Decalogue, 747 

Smyth, Newman, 560 

Pedagogical intent of Old Tes- 

ment, 561 

Theory of Resurrection, . 593, 594 

Socialism, 56-58, 67 

Philosophic 502 

Revolutionary 502 

Society, Augustus's scheme, . . . 498 

Bases of 493 

Episcopal scheme 495 

Hildebrand's scheme, .... 494 

Ideal . . 506, 515, 516 

Mohammedan idea of . . 505, 506 
Napoleon's scheme 497 



PAGE. 

Society, Pagan idea of 503 

Plato's scheme 498, 499 

Political idea of 496, 497 

Puritanic scheme, 495 

Scientific idea of ... . 500, 501 
Socialistic idea of ...... . 502 

Socinus, 666 

Sociology, Herbert Spencer's . . 499 

Socrates, Daemon of . . 48 

Philosophy of 19, 81, 82 

Somme, Valley of 181, 182 

Sophists, 80 

Soteriology, 716 

Soul, the 166, 567 

Brahminical notions of . . . . 444 

Immortality of . 63 

Lotze's definition of 585 

Resurrection of 597 

Southall, Prof 181, 182 

Prof., Antiquity of man, . . . 748 

Space, .461 

Species, 105, 132, 163 

Extinct 181 

Introduction of 164 

Stability of 470 

Variety of . . . .163 

Spectator, the London 280 

Spencer, Herbert 101,106 

" Complete living " of . . . .682 

Ethics of 322, 323 

Interpretation of mind, . 201-203 

Non-atheistic, 698 

Opinion of Christianity, . . . 660 
Sociology, ........ 499, 500 

Theism of 698, 699 

Spinoza, 89, 90, 106, 194, 209 

Spirit, Hellenic 114 

Modern 341 

Spiritualism, 55 

Roman, 621 

Sports, Gladiatorial 528 

Suppressed, 552 

Stanley, Dean 590 

Statistics, Religious 723 

Stewart, Balfour 235 

Dugald 92, 106, 190, 209 

Stoicism, 83 

Contributions of 539 

Morality of 336, 553 

Strauss, " Have we a Religion?" . 345 

Ignorance confessed, 177 

Object of worship, ...... 701 

Symbolical interpretation of 

Bible, 668 

Transcendental theory, . . .175 

Strikes, 512 

Struggles, Life's 484 

Styx, the river 639 

Substances, the two 583 



776 



INDEX. 



PAGE. 

Succession, Doctrine of 241 

Supernatural, the 566, 567 

Superstition, 352 

Swedenborg, . 134, 473 

Second adventism, 608 

Theory of resurrection, . 593, 594 
Switzerland, Lake dwellings in .185 

Sympathy, doctrine of 322 

Synoptists, the 390 

System, Value of 441 

T. 

Tait, Prof 155, 247 

Tallevrand, 61 

Taoism, 345, 724 

Reproduced 738 

Tarsus, 357 

Schools of 359 

Tartarus, 55, 438, 578, 639 

Tefft, B. F. . . • 704 

Teleology, 286 

Astronomy a proof 296 

Baer's Ridicule, 300 

Cook's, doubt 291 

Duke of Argyll's indorsement, 298 

, Gastric juice, 295 

Hick's assault, 288 

Oxygen a proof, 293 

Physiology a proof, 293 

Plato's trouble, . 300 

Premature conclusions, . . . 301 
Rudimentary organs op- 
posed 300, 301 

Schopenhauer's objection, . . 300 

Theological 705 

Various arguments, ..... 296 

Temptation, Christ's 388 

Tertullian, 553 

Testament, New 564 

Ethics of 750 

Evolution of 630 

Immortality taught 590 

Old 564 

Old, Assault on 745, 746 

Old, Immortality taught . 589, 590 
Old, Optical accuracy .... 572 
Old, Scientifically vindicated, . 721 

Thales, 74-76, 105 

Theater, Flavian 552 

Theism, Argument from de- 
sign 280, 281 

Cato's declaration, 274 

Intuitional, 447 

Law of Causation a proof, . . 278 
Law of Continuity a proof,. 278, 279 

Magnetism of 641 

Philosophic basis defective, . 281 
Mohammedan doctrine . . . 447 
Triumph of 450 



PAGE. 

Theodicy, Basis of 490 

Range of 486 

Theodorus, 329 

Theology, 27 

Compromise, 665 

Evils of 655, 656 

New 603 

Poetic 339, 579 

Scientific 432 

Theophorus, . 670 

Theseus, Temple of ' . . 396 

Thiers, M 343 

Tholuck, 665 

Thompson, Sir William 319 

Thought, Regulated 719 

Thrasyllus, 22 

Time, 461 

Titus . 382 

Townse'nd, Dr. L. T. '. '. '. '. '. '. 605 

Torch-race, a 725 

Torricelli, 570 

Trade, International .... 517, 518 

Tradition, 735 

Traducianism, 168 

Trajan, 670 

Transcendency, Doctrine of . . . 240 

Transcendentalism, 444 

Transmigration, Doctrine of . . . 444 

Tran substantiation, 656 

Trench, Archbishop .... 414, 609' 

Tribes, South African 348 

Trinity, 388 

Developed, 538 

Errors from 603 

Geometric 632 

Rejected 447 

Truth, Basis of 438 

Christianity is 759, 760 

Criteria of 674 

Danger to 758 

Difficulties in obtaining . . . 211 

Embryonic 537 

Hidden 674,675 

Intuitional, 216 

Nature of 440 

Necessity of 574 

Revealed 221 

Self-dependent 537 

Sources of 220 

Theistic 417, 418 

Unity of 752 

Unknowable 416 

Tyndall, Prof 151,155,160 

Idea of energy, 239 

U. 

Uhlhorn, 553 

Ultimate, Incognizable 117 

Ultimates 327 



INDEX. 



777 



Ulysses, 307 

Unconditioned, the 113, 119 

Rejected 271, 272 

Unitarianism, 640, 655 

Unitv, Argument from 471 

Nature's 467, 468 

Of the race, 468 

Universalism, 665 

Universe, Eternal 124 

Explanation of 569 

Imperfect, 296 

Materials of 468 

Produced, 153 

Teleological character of . 279, 280 

468, 469 

Unseen, 602 

Upham, 118 

Ur, City of 748 

Utility, Doctrine of 513 

Utopia, Sir Thomas More's ... 499 
Utopianism, Practical 557 



442, 



Vaccination, .... 
Vatican, Fine arts in, . 

Vedas, The 

Version, Ee vised 

Septuagint 

Vibrations, Philosophic 

Vico, . . . • • 

Vinci, Leonardo da 

Virgil, 

Virtue, Aristotle's definition of . 

Vishnu, 

Vitalism, Theory of ... . 160, 

Vogt, Karl 

Voltaire, . . 510, 

W. 

Wallace, A. R 173, 

Flints, Estimating age of . . . 
Theism of 

Watson, Richard . • 

Watt, James . . . 

Weight, Atomic 

Weisman, Prof 



649 
549 
443 
546 
748 
115 
104 
548 
514 
513 
443 
683 
173 
545 



178 
1811 
274 I 
69! 
619 
132 
585 



PAGE. 

Wesley, John 659 

Whedon, D. D 480, 609 

Whewell . 545 

Whitney, Prof 174 

Will, Scopenhauer's idea of . . . 262 

William of Occam 87 

Wilson, Sir Thomas 558 

Winchell, Prof., Tribes examined 

by 343 

Winkleman, Abbe 674, 675 

Wolf 438 

Woman, Mohammedan idea of 

552, 553, 718 

Women, Community of 509 

World, Conflagration of .... 618 

Intermediate 602-606 

Phenomenal 456 

Spiritual 474 

Worsade, 182 

Wyman, Prof 155 

Wythe, Dr 161 

X. 

Xavier, Francis 722 

Y. 

Yale College, 547 

Yama, the 716 

Yoga, Philosophy of 336 

Youth, Paul's 358-360 

Plato's 18, 19 

Z. 

Zealanders, New 577 

Zeno, 83, 105 

Ethical notions of 513 

The Stoic 215 

Zenocrates, 17 

Zenophanes, 77, 105 

Zero, 635 

Zerubbabel, 421 

Zeus, 335, 430, 477 

Zoology, 132, 437 

Zoroaster, 329, 331 

Zoroastrianism, Resurrection idea 

of • 598 

Zwingli, 656, 740 



Finis. 



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